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 Almodóvar 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 Almodóvar 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 18 years to find her ex-husband. That man now happens to be a woman called Lola (Michael Shaeffer) who is dying from AIDS. Even so, Lola has impregnated the naive nun Rosa (Joanne Froggatt, playing the Penélope Cruz film role), whom Manuela later begrudgingly befriends. Manuela, meanwhile, has taken a job as an assistant to the stage actress Huma Rojo (Diana Rigg), who is portraying Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” on the Barcelona stage.

Though it sounds rather confusing and sensationalized, in fact the writing delves shrewdly into the minutiae of life. Both the film and the play cleverly weave together the stories of people whose lives normally would not cross but become linked by the consequences of their pasts. The genius of Almodóvar—and those who have developed the play for the stage—is that he is able to flesh out characters so they are not caricatures. It’s more than just giving a prostitute or a transsexual a heart of gold; it’s about giving them complexity and understatement through layers of intelligence, humor and guts.

One of the biggest challenges was creating the wide variety of settings where the story takes place. To move the play along, director Tom Cairns uses screens to demarcate locales and sets sequential scenes on different parts of the stage. The audience at times doubles as the audience for the theater scenes; characters like Esteban and Manuela’s transsexual best friend, Agrado, address theatergoers directly. Though much of “All About My Mother” stays true to Almodóvar’s film, bits of dialogue have been added and certain characters changed. In the play, Agrado is more campy—something that plays well with theatergoers, who love over-the-top British pantomime. But Agrado is also more fleshed out on stage, giving the audience insight into her desire for attention. Manuela and Esteban’s relationship differs as well; in the film the mother and son seem close, but in the play their interactions seemed strained and more complicated. The play, however, remains unfailingly true to Almodóvar’s Spanish roots. “It never occurred to us to set it anywhere else,” Pakenham says. “The spirit of Pedro is in a sense the spirit of Spain and that is where it should be set and where it belongs.” Unless it’s in a theater in the West End.