Samuel Adamson's new play at the Old Vic is a fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's award-winning film of the same name. Ostensibly the story is the invention of 17-year old Esteban (Colin Morgan) who wishes to know more about his single mother's secret past. However, the action is set almost entirely after the events that lead his mother Manuela (played faultlessly by Lesley Manville) to try to locate the boy's father, whom he has never met.
      We're dragged in forcibly after a short framing speech by Esteban. His mother is grieving his accidental death in a hospital waiting room. A doctor awkwardly tries to get Manuela to consent to his organs being donated, and it's only after she convincingly breaks down in tears that we realise that we have been watching a role-playing exercise. Manuela is a nurse working for the hospital's transplant team, and it was with relief that I realised that the stiff acting of the doctor was that of a skilled actor playing a doctor taking part in a training simulation. The boundaries between the main action of the play, the role-playing exercise, the framing speeches by Esteban, the compere's jokes by drag queen Agrado (played to the hilt by Mark Gatiss, complete with thick Welsh accent) and the play-within-a-play are all deftly drawn by use of filmic-quality scene and lighting changes. Esteban wants to take credit for all of it - he thinks he's a budding Truman Capote - but whose story is it really?
      Manuela's search for the missing Lola/Esteban Senior, from whom she parted before his son was born, takes her to Barcelona where she is reunited with her old friend, the transvestite prostitute Agrado. S/he introduces Manuela to Sister Rosa, a young nun (innocently played by Joanne Frogatt) who unsuccessfully tries to help her find a job, firstly by introducing Manuela to her own mother, who is cold and unpleasant to both. As the only unsympathetic female character in the play, Eleanor Bron does an admirable job of creating an "inauthentic" woman, whose work consists of forging artworks by great modern painters.
      Manuela eventually finds a job working as personal assistant to the leading Spanish actress Huma Roja (Diana Rigg), who is playing Blanche Dubois in a touring production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and we are soon immersed in references to the film "All About Eve", about an ambitious young actress who eventually upstages the fading Bette Davis (for whom read Rigg, who is perfectly cast as the older diva). However, Manuela is no Eve Harrington: she has no ambition apart from caring for others. She is an idealised woman, a virgin queen, a woman who takes in needy strangers, is non-judgemental, self-sacrificing, nurturing, and potentially a great actress to boot. Esteban reappears to her at key moments and his continued presence in her life seems to inspire her to new heights. Her (and death's) influence is so strong that by the end even Sister Rosa's mother is attempting to understand what it takes to be human.
      References to Tenessee Williams' play, the Mankiewicz film and Lorca's Blood Wedding abound. These are strong women (or men who play women), whose bonds with the ones they love are so strong that they wish to be steeped in each other's blood when they die. Fantasy trumps reality throughout and it's clear that only through one's desires that the truth can be found, as in Agrado's search for her "authentic" self through successive body modification. Only death intrudes.
      There are no likeable leading men in this play: only boys, drag queens and a caricature of a cocky actor in Mario (Bradley Freegard) who plays Stanley Kowalski in the Streetcar scenes ("time for your Brando imitation" says Agrado after she has taken over the role of Huma's assistant, but before Mario asks her for a blowjob). Twice-absent father Lola has "the worst qualities of a man and the worst of a woman" according to Manuela, and we believe it.
      The play is Almodovar from top to bottom, not least for its sympathetic portrayal of women and transgenders and its dark humour. In some respects it almost works better on stage, making dynamic use as this production does of so many purely theatrical possibilities. Directed by Tom Cairns, with music from the film by Alberto Iglesias. In full colour, with paper moons and stage spots by Bruno Poet.
Chris Brody