Copyright 1993 Gannett Company, Inc.   
USA TODAY 


May 4, 1993, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION 

SECTION: LIFE; Pg. 10D 

LENGTH: 524 words 

HEADLINE: Broadway welcomes Brent Carver with a 'Kiss' 

BYLINE: David Patrick Stearns 

DATELINE: NEW YORK 

BODY: 
    To Broadway theatergoers, Brent Carver is a star without a past. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, he has arrived in Kiss of the Spiderwoman, playing the leading role of Molina in a way that makes audiences forget William Hurt's Oscar-winning movie portrayal. 

"He's a brilliant classical actor, but then he opens his mouth and out comes a real singer, and not just an actor who sings," says Spiderwoman songwriter John Kander. "He's one of the most remarkable actors I've ever worked with. He's a kind of a genius." 

Critics in Toronto and London, where the show played previously, agree. Yet talent of this stature doesn't come out of nowhere: Carver, 41, has 20 years of experience behind him, mostly in classical theater in Canada, including four seasons at the Stratford Festival. 

The Spiderwoman team happened upon him when the first choice for the role - Richard Thomas - canceled. They realized that Carver, already hired as his understudy, had an extraordinary feeling for the role of an imprisoned gay window dresser. 

The characterization isn't something arrived at from some tortuous method-actor process or exhaustive research on South American prisons. "I looked around. I thought about things, I listened," Carver says. 

Friendly but shy offstage, Carver is anything but the flamboyant character he plays. Much of his interpretation comes from memories of Bette Davis movies he watched on TV while growing up in a small town in the Canadian Rockies. 

That gave the character its toughness: Carver's Molina shakes his mane of blond hair with an outlaw's air. Unlike Hurt, he eschewed dressing in drag. "Drag wouldn't have clarified anything," he says. 

However, Carver - and the show - don't shy away from depicting homosexuality. While Falsettos, a musical dealing with AIDS, never shows men kissing, Spiderwoman does. Passionately. 

"It is called Kiss of the Spiderwoman, and there ought to be a kiss somewhere!" Carver laughs. "Sometimes when it happens, there's been a rumbling in the audience, but I'm not sure if the reaction is because people are taken aback or because they're actually understanding what the story is about. 

"There's a whole mythology around kissing, about how intimate and dangerous it is," he says. "It can mean 'I love you,' but it can also be a kiss of death. It's an extraordinary gesture, so full of things. That's what this show is all about." 

Some see his character as symbolizing the struggle for gay rights, and that's reflected in his fan mail. "A lot of people said it gave them inspiration to keep going - whatever kind of struggle they're in, to just carry on and go ahead with things." 

He's an unlikely political symbol - and star. One journalist from London's Daily Telegraph described the wide-eyed actor as "still adjusting to finding himself on planet Earth." That's an exaggeration, but Carver prefers country to city, spends his days off in Central Park, and though he wears his grandmother's wedding ring, is single. And few are so casual about fame. 

"I've been doing this most of my life," he says, "and hopefully, it means you can get a lot more work. But it is fleeting." 

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH