Menier's tight new staging of Manuel Puig's classic

The ever-adaptable space of the Menier Chocolate Factory is transformed into a stinking Buenos Aires jail cell in this tight two hander that explores the growing romance between the chalk and cheese occupants, Molina (Samuel Barnett) and Valentin (Declan Bennett), a camp window dresser and gruff political prisoner, as they pass the time arguing, eating and recounting the plots of salacious old movies.

Puig's play, in the hands of adapters Jose Rivera and Allan Baker and director Laurie Sansom, becomes a choreographed dance that twists fantasy and reality together irrevocably, until neither the characters or the audience are sure of the outcome. For other plays, that might be a problem, but the ambiguity works here, aided in no part by the fantastic performance by Barnett as he mercurially switches between provocateur, caregiver and femme fatal for the increasingly unwell Bennett, who in turn fiercely oscillates between anger and tenderness as he is eroded by the system. The source material itself is made into a fantasy too, as much as a drama set in a grim south american prison in the 1970s can be. The two speak with regional accents in a fairly modern cadence, and if their names were less evocative, could be anywhere, in any time.

Top billing though, goes to the marvellous visual effects and set design, which do as much to blur the lines of fantasy and real life as the performances. The sensuality of Molina's movies as they spill into his own actions is brilliant wrought by Andrzej Goulding's projection design as it plays out on Jon Bausor's harsh set, that pulls no punches as to the nature of such an incarceration.

A dreamlike play with little oases of draconian torture and unending routine, it really does draw you into its quietly seductive web, never really letting you know if you survived or not. Though not entirely without its flaws, it's a neat night out for those in the mood for a unusual escape from the daily grind.

The Kiss of The Spider Woman is at the Menier Chocolate Factory until May 5th

View our show pages for more information about Kiss of the Spider Woman, Menier Chocolate Factory.