Manuel Puig’s original novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman, is a remarkable piece of literature. It lacks description, only dialogue and commentary. You learn who is talking by content alone. It is a tale of tales, a weaving of seemingly disparate realities trapped in the same Argentinean cell; one is a homosexual’s retelling of an old movie and the circumstances that have brought him to this incarceration, the other’s a Marxist political prisoner whose philosophy is colored by his longings. These tales told by trapped men are their comfort, their undoing, and their salvation. The one thing that the successful movie and the more fanciful and less successful musical missed was the anonymity that begins our journey with Molina and Valentin. We are thrown into the middle of this play version, jarred by our unannounced, unexplained insertion. Actors Theatre’s mounting of the original play adaptation wisely makes sure to distance itself from the film and the musical. No one should expect Raul Julia or Chita Rivera, but will instead receive truth, pain, allegory, love, desire, and loss as portrayed by two veteran actors. These elements make for the great evening of theatre you’d expect from the valley’s edgy company.

Director Kirk Jackson and actors Oliver Wadsworth and Richard Trujillo are well known to Actors Theatre’s patrons, and they are the right choices to helm and for Molina and Valentin. Jackson works well with small casts, tight confines, and loquacious texts. He is able at various turns to transform Kim Williamson’s cold cell through blocking and Paul A. Black’s expressive lighting into a haven or a claustrophobic trap. He makes some very nice theatrical choices for potentially awkward textual moments. The tentative bond that forms between Molina and Valentin is hard fought, and Jackson lets his actors take their time. He trusts that they’ll know their way, and they respond with touching portrayals.

Wadsworth is making his acting career with characters on the periphery. He presents Molina and all of his flourishes without turning the character into a stereotype. Wadsworth expresses and pouts and goads and remains perfectly human, and that makes us love his character and loathe his circumstances. Trujillo starts his portrayal of Valentin as cold and committed, full of politics and cut off from visceral, base concerns. But as Wadsworth’s Molina cuts through the doctrine with images of beauty and love and passion, Trujillo makes Valentin into a human with the frailties of the bourgeois. His illness is portrayed with frightening accuracy, and his conversion is a triumph that we share. Jackson then gives us a choice for the final images of the evening that is as powerful as it is jarring and heartbreaking.

Williamson’s box cell is a perfect creation, raked for viewing and appointed with loving detail. Black’s lighting is masterful, full of barely noticeable cues that add texture to the moments. Lois K. Myers’ costumes set character, while David Temby’s sound design works with Jackson’s theatrical choices.