6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A well-made play with a Chekovian atmosphere, April 1, 2004
By A Customer
I saw this play on Broadway and later directed a staged reading of it in a University setting... it's really a lovely piece and grows on you the more you work with it. There are no weak parts -- seven strong characters all have significant roles (Eliades is a cameo, but can be doubled by Palomo). The setting (a cigar factory in 1929 Tampa) is unusual, as is the situation (the lector reads classic literature to the workers as they hand-roll cigars). While some of the script uses phrases that suggest classic Latino "magical realism", the real magic is in the experience of a group of people becoming lost in a piece of literature, as the Russia of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" lives again in Florida. There is an abundance of romance along with social realism, as the cigar-rolling machines threaten a traditional way of life.
This play is best performed in an intimate space -- I recommend Spanish guitar music for the scene changes and comfortable seats for the audience to relax and soak up the language and Caribbean atmosphere of this poetic drama. It works on a lot of different levels and would be great to read in a classroom or use as the basis of a term paper. (I'm writing one now.)
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Today we are baptizing our new cigar...Anna Karenina.", October 6, 2004
Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Anna in the Tropics recreates the Cuban-American community in Ybor City, Florida, in 1929,with its color, its cockfights, its close relationships, and its love of romance. Santiago and his wife Ofelia own a cigar factory, where the sometimes illiterate workers roll cigars and, to keep from becoming bored, hire a "lector" to read to them. Romantic stories spice up their lives, and since they have finished Wuthering Heights, they now look forward to a new novel, Anna Karenina, read by a new lector, Juan Julian.
Conchita, one of the workers whose marriage with Palomo has grown stale, soon finds herself reenacting Anna Karenina, as she has a passionate affair with Juan Julian, and then tells Palomo about it. Marela, daughter of Santiago and Ofelia, also fantasizes about Juan Julian. Reality intrudes on romance, however, when Santiago's gambling on cockfights results in partial ownership of the factory going to Cheche, his half-brother, who now wants to introduce machines to speed up production. He also wants to eliminate the lector, to the workers' further dismay.
In language that is often lyrical and sometimes fanciful, the action unfolds, with discussions evolving about the nature and importance of literature, the enduring values of their culture, the importance of love, and the possible effects of "progress" on traditional values. The characters, though not fully drawn and sometimes too obviously following plot lines of Anna Karenina, are, nevertheless, interesting and unusual as they try to do the best they can during trying times. To celebrate their happiness with the story of Anna Karenina, they decide to create a new cigar in her honor, and to have Marela serve as the model for the cigar box, but their happiness is as fragile and temporary as the idea of a "family" of workers making cigars without machines.
When disaster strikes, it affects the entire factory, and the characters must decide to what extent it is possible to remain in a fantasy world when reality has reared its ugly head, and to what extent it is possible to hold on to the past when the survival of the factory may depend on progress. The obvious themes, their rather thin development, and the plot lines which parallel Anna Karenina show playwright Nilo Cruz's desire to give significance to this tragedy, though the characters do not develop fully on their own. Unique and unusual in its approach, however, the play beautifully captures a time and place in history. Mary Whipple
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Bit Predictable and Formulaic With A Few Good Moments, November 23, 2004
I haven't seen a production of this play, so I'm judging only by the quality of the text on the page. As stated by a few other reviewers here, the play is just very predictable. Characters are narrowly drawn and perform like puppets used by the playwright to make a point about how the world is about to change from one that is warm and vital to one that is harsh and mechanized. Not exactly breaking new ground here, so it's odd the play earned a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe the production adds nuances that the written text just doesn't have (a good director can make even modest material come alive.) This play felt contrived and agenda-driven, not in a hugely in-your-face way, but more in a piece-of-fluff way. I can't imagine it surprised the author as he was writing it - which isn't good - and it probably won't surprise anyone reading it. It's old news and a bit tired.
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