The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Anna In the Tropics Gets Staged in Newps

Most Americans equate Cuba with Fidel Castro, cigars, rum and baseball. But it has produced an incredible literary history. From Cuban national hero José Martí in the 19th century to Richard Blanco, the first Latino and gay man to read at a presidential inauguration (Barack Obama's second), the list of Cuban and Cuban-American novelists, poets and playwrights is a very long one.

No list is complete without Nilo Cruz. The first Latino to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama (in 2003), his work is infused with the political and cultural sense of being a child of two countries (his family immigrated from Cuba on a Freedom Flight in 1970, when he was 10), and his writing style, as with so many notable Latino writers, is lyrically rich and evocative. Both of those attributes are on full display in Anna In the Tropics, the play that earned him his Pulitzer. Set in a small cigar factory on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida, in 1929, the play features characters with one foot steeped in the traditions of their island home and the other lodged in the increasing modernity of America.

The arrival of a new lector from Havana, the person charged with reading to the factory workers as they stuff, roll and bind cigars, compounds that struggle between the comfortable, if slowly dissipating past, and the uncertain future. Add sex, literature and imagination into the mix, and it becomes a full-blown conflict, albeit on a very small scale.

Juan Julian (Adam Navarro) is that lector, invited to the cigar factory by Ofelia (Laura Flores), whose husband, Santiago (Joseph Manville), owns it. But Santiago is also a drinker and a gambler, and he has foolishly given a share of the factory to his half-brother, Cheché (Angel Correa), who wants to modernize the operation with machines. Ofelia's two daughters are both hopeless romantics. The youngest, Marela (Michelle Skinner), is carried to rapture by hearing the lector read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Conchita (Pallavi Srinivasan) is also a romantic, but she's looking for something a bit more physical than found in books, which does not sit well with her husband, Palomo (Cameron Moore).

The two strengths of Cruz's play, its straightforward story and its ravishing language, are fully displayed in this Michael Serna-directed production at the Newport Theatre Arts Center. What's missing is the pasión. Rather than a tragedy set into motion by the very real, earthy desires of its characters for sexual, emotional and financial fulfillment, things seem almost predestined. Most of the eight characters yearn for something, whether it's found in the temporal realm of the body or the ethereal realm of the soul, but rarely do they seem that hungry. The love affair, which is ignited by the reading of Tolstoy and the eloquence of Cruz's writing, seems matter-of-fact. The jealousy, envy and greed seem too perfunctory at times. That doesn't make the story hard to follow, but it does make it difficult to invest in.

That is most borne out by Navarro's portrayal of Juan Julian. Although he looks the part—equal parts dashing and prideful—and he is clear and articulate in both his speech and his readings, the lack of any Old World flair from a man recently arrived from Cuba works against his character. Juan is a relic of the past, but he's also an exotic intrusion. His introduction into the factory sets this story in motion, but the standard American dialect doesn't make him seem an outsider who embodies the archaic notion that literature matters not only on the page, but also in the minds and hearts of those who absorb it.

The other characters all have their moments, but they feel less than fully realized. Those who burn don't smolder enough. The characters who dream don't seem to ache enough. There's a lot of talking about what they want, but not a great deal of showing. Only Correa's Cheché seems fully realized. He is a bundle of energy and conflicts, and Correa skillfully captures his complexity and his insecurity. Hell, he even makes the guy the most likeable person onstage—not just because he's truly likeable, but also because he knows what he wants and he's hell-bent on achieving it.

Even with the all-too-often tonal tameness, this Anna is watchable primarily because it is so listenable thanks to Cruz's writing brilliance. On one level, this is a play about the difficulty of communicating our innermost thoughts to even the people who are closest to us; the fact Cruz relays that story through such a lyrically dense work is very impressive. As one character says, “Anyone who dedicates his life to reading books believes in rescuing things from oblivion.” As long as writers such as Cruz are still around, the power and transformative nature of words will continue to elude that inky grasp.

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