All About My Drama.(Theater)(All About My Mother)(Theater review)

Byline: Ginanne Brownell; With Sophie Grove

An Almodovar film is adapted for the stage.

Far more plays have been turned into successful films than vice versa. Recently Alan Bennett's drama "The History Boys" was made into a critically acclaimed film starring Richard Griffiths, and the 2004 Oscar-nominated movie "Closer" was based on Patrick Marber's celebrated stage play. Of the films that have earned a second life on the stage, most have been musicals -- chief among them John Waters's "Hairspray" and Mel Brooks's "The Producers." Now the ever-innovative Old Vic in London has taken the daring step of transforming the work of cinematic master Pedro Almodovar into theater with the adaptation of his Academy Award-winning 1999 film "All About My Mother."

The play's world premiere at the Old Vic (running through Nov. 24) marks the first time the Spanish director has allowed any of his films to be adapted for the stage in more than 20 years. Both "Dark Habits" and "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" were produced without his direct involvement, and he was not pleased with the outcome. But the Old Vic may be just the right venue for an edgy film director; since the historic playhouse reopened its doors three years ago it has gained a reputation for bucking convention. Driving that experimentation is the theater's artistic director, Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey; if there was anyone who could convince Almodovar that his film would be treated with the utmost integrity, it was Spacey. It took more than two years to develop the film for the stage, and Almodovar was involved from the start, attending workshops with the actors and watching several previews before the play opened August 25. "So much [of the film] is about the theater, about performing and the nature of the world these characters live in," says the Old Vic's producer Kate Pakenham. "So I think that bringing it into the theater was a natural journey."

That doesn't mean it was an easy one. The play swirls around a handful of characters including two transsexuals, two mothers, a nun with HIV and an aging acting legend and her heroin-addicted lesbian lover. Manuela (Lesley Manville), whose son Esteban (Colin Morgan) is hit by a car and killed in the opening moments of the play, has returned to Barcelona after ...