APT’s ‘Anna in the Tropics’ sparks with poetry and passion
A cigar circles the stage, passed from person to person with the solemnity of a common cup at communion. Each smoker exhales in his or her own way — eyes squeezed shut or open with anticipation, excited or solemn, thoughtful, entranced.
This moment, late in “Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz, carries the weight of a sacred ritual. Running at American Players Theatre through Sept. 26, “Anna” lifts stories and cigars into something like holiness.
Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this play, a love letter to literature set in 1929 Ybor City, in Tampa, Florida. Josafath Reynoso’s cigar factory set is gorgeous and infinitely detailed, brick archways and decorative cigar ads framing low wooden desks on wheels where the workers stuff, roll and wrap cigars by hand.
Cigar rollers in Florida brought the tradition of lectors with them from Cuba — think early audiobooks with in-person readers. When “Anna” opens, a dashing new reader named Juan Julian (Ronald Román-Meléndez) has sailed from the island, 19th century great novels in tow, to upset the delicate balance at Santiago’s (Triney Sandoval’s) family business.
As his wife, Ofelia (Elizabeth Ledo), and their daughters wait breathlessly for the lector to arrive, Santiago can’t stop betting on the roosters. He wagers a share of his factory to his half-brother Cheché (Sam Luis Massaro, tightly wound and watchful), and the loss deepens a budding power struggle.
Gambling is the only time Cheché seems to win. The others in the factory reject his ideas to modernize. His wife left him for a lector. Juan Julian’s first choice of a novel, “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy, will “go right to Cheché’s heart,” as Marela (Phoebe Gonzaléz) says.
Actually, Tolstoy’s Russian heroine, her loveless marriage and tortured affair go right to everyone’s heart. Hopeful, naïve Marela, enraptured by the tale, daydreams about Moscow.
“I don’t try to understand everything they say,” she says. “I let myself be taken. When Juan Julian starts reading, the story enters my body and I become the second skin of the characters.”
Conchita (Melisa Pereyra, swooning and sensuous) sees parallels to her troubled marriage to Palomo (Yona Moises Olivares). She’s drawn in not only by the story, but by the teller. (Pereyra and Román-Meléndez have magnetic chemistry, punctuated by curls of smoke.)
In less-skilled hands, “Anna in the Tropics” can tip toward melodrama. Not here. Robert Ramirez’s direction feels cohesive, yet lush. It’s a story within a story within a story — as Juan Julian starts to read, “Anna” sounds like a tribute to the tragedy and poetry that has been APT’s essential mission for more than 40 years.
“Anna in the Tropics” pulls at tensions between old ways and new, as jealousies simmer and the powder keg of Cheché’s frustration threatens to ignite. Still, Cruz’s script has occasional pitfalls, plot points (mostly connected to Cheché) raised and too-quickly resolved. The ending feels slightly undercooked.
What sings like the Cuban music in Willow James’ lively sound design are the relationships, like the believable needling between Santiago and Ofelia. Jason Lynch’s lighting design blankets the stage in soft shadow, warm hues making the air look heavy and thick.
“Anybody who dedicates his life to reading books believes in rescuing things from oblivion,” Conchita says. This play believes in poetry. “Anna in the Tropics” is a literary love song, and it’s lovely to hear it again.
