Customer Reviews

Anna in the Tropics (Library Edition Audio CDs)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.)

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

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.

I was quite excited to read this play after hearing the playwright speak and read excerpts from it. However, I found out that this is a play better suited to be seen than read. Reading it cannot possibly capture the rhythm of the Cuban characters speech that Cruz has aptly recreated. [I should know, as I live in Miami] Cruz had done a lot of research on Ybor City, but it seemed to not come through as vividly as one might think. [I've been to the charming little city] Sure, one could easily find historical data that points to the lectors and Cuban cigar makers: but that is information easily found and known. Still, there are lines that are just plain beautiful and make the reader stop and say "Hmmm..." But in this writer's opinion, Cruz' "Beauty of the Father" is much more poetic, deeper, and beautiful. Maybe the Pulitzer should have gone to that one.

Given that most plays should be seen and not read, this play is, for contemporary drama, refreshingly ambitious. It takes on the question of the transformative nature of art in life. Art gives dignity: These people, after all, roll cigars. But in a world of dignified work, they dress to come to work, take pride in their craft, and spend their days listening to performances (like those attending the play, right?), analyzing characters and plot and performers. To be displaced by a machine is not only to lose the craft of their work--the hand-rolled fine cigar displaced by the MacStoagie--but to lose, in the din of tending the machine, the opportunity to listen to performance. Is the bottom line more important than art? The symbolism may be heavy-handed, but the dramatist, after all, must work quickly to make his point. Shakespeare it ain't, but I found it refreshing to read a play with aspirations to lofty content.

This is a well-written play. Hence the Pulitzer Prize. Yet many people do not know about this playwright. What a shame. If you have the time, please get your own copy & enjoy!

It allowed me to remember and think about the scenes in the play, to extend and enhance my theatre experience. It arrived in a timely manner and was in excellent condition. Thank you.

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina isn't a book that you would usually think of people
getting really passionate about. The cigar factory becomes a place where
people have issues about love and it is centered around a handsome
reader of books. The explosion is a while building and when it happens,
you knew something was on the way...
It is well written play, but I really don't like it very well.
Maybe that is a good thing?

Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics (Theatre Communications Group, 2002)

I've been trying, on and off, to review this for almost three months now, and I haven't been able to get anything to stick. My original idea was to write something about what a fine period piece it is, but it kept ringing hollow, since I'm not old enough to have been around during the period in question. It feels right, but if I've learned anything in forty years, it's not to trust my sense of nostalgia for things that occurred before I was born. (And the more my daughter's generation embraces the seventies, the more I have that reinforced in my head.) Then came ideas for a long missive about the parallel between the plot here and Anna Karenina, the novel read by the lector in this play, but that seemed far too obvious to spend a great deal of time on; it is, after all, the mechanism that moves the play. I eventually came to the realization that this is so far outside my normal sphere of experience that I don't really have much of anything to say about it except what I felt. I enjoyed reading it, though I do think it got heavy-handed at times. Cruz id very good at letting the surface story mask what's really going on; most of the actual action of this play goes on just to the left of the stage, as it were, and we're left to interpret things ourselves. I find this to be a very good thing. It is overshadowed at times by that heavy-handedness, which is just as much a paradox as it sounds, so I ended up with conflicting feelings. But the fact that I'm still thinking about it three months and almost one hundred fifty books later certainly says something about its power to stay with the reader long after the cover is closed. ***

I have lived in Tampa most of my thirty eight years on this planet so I am instantly attracted to anything in The Tampa genre.
However, this play will put you to sleep. Its a pity because the Ybor City district of Tampa is ideally suited for a play especially one dealing with the history of cigars. Buy Nitol instead!