Anna in the Tropics
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
Open Fist Theatre Company
Extended through June 23
RECOMMENDED
One of the many pleasures to be found in Open Fist Theatre Company’s production of Anna in the Tropics is a reminder of the emotional richness and beauty that immigrants bring to this country. There is an openness to change and new ideas, a vulnerability and a deep sense of hope that is overwhelming to behold.
This was true of the Irish when they first came, and the Italians, and the Jews of New York’s Lower East Side. And what playwright Nilo Cruz here captures so beautifully is how true this is of the Cubans who came to Florida in the late 1920s.
Cruz himself came to Little Havana in Miami with his parents on a Freedom Flight in 1970, but he knows his early 20th century characters and their circumstances from the inside — all except one, that is. But we’ll get to that.
The core characters are a family that has moved its cigar factory from Havana to Ybor City in Florida outside of Tampa. There’s father Santiago (Steve Wilcox), his wife Ofelia (Jill Remez), older daughter Conchita (Presciliana Esparolini) and younger daughter Marela (Jade Santana). There’s also Santiago’s half-brother Cheche, who is also half-American — and pretty much half a character. We hear rumors and insinuations about him that explain why he’s so bitter and selfish — but we never hear anything solid that makes him seem real. Nor do we understand why the family treats him so well. Antonio Jaramillo plays him with a certain swagger and sense of humor that makes him palatable for a while; but he eventually turns into a telenovela caricature.
The event that sets the play into motion is the arrival of Juan Julian (Byron Quiros), the new “Lectore de Tabaqueres,” who reads novels to the factory workers while they are rolling cigars by hand. It’s an honorable Cuban tradition which is already becoming obsolete in Florida factories. It’s also a lovely metaphor for the family’s humanism which is being undercut by American technology.
The “Lectores” usually read romance novels of questionable literary merit, but Juan Julian is a student of serious literature, and he reads Tolstoy’s tragic novel Anna Karenina. This goes over well with the two sisters, but not so much with Conchita’s husband Palomo (Javi Mulero), who also works in the factory. Conchita has found out that Palomo has been cheating on her, so she takes this opportunity to return the favor with Juan Julian. Quiros brings a very strong mix of intellectual and erotic charisma, and this helps elevate the tension and bring the audience more deeply into the play’s confluence of passions and ideas.
Jon Lawrence Rivera directs with great sensitivity and deep affection for the characters, but the production fell apart for me at the end, when the melodramatic course of events overwhelms his delicate design.
Rivera is well-served by his designers, who have created a highly inviting environment. Set designer Christopher Scott Murillo gives us a cigar factory that has a family feeling to it, with wooden tables and benches, high ceilings and hanging lamps. Lighting designer Matt Richter relays the brightness of a Florida morning, when everything seems possible, elsewhere recreating the sexy shadows of a burgeoning romance.
This production recalls for us not only the many gifts that immigrants carry with them but the deep conflicts and complications that they often encounter here.
Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; extended through Jun. 23. (323) 882-6912 or www.openfist.org. Running time: two hours with one intermission.
