What do cigars and "Anna Karenina" have in common?
In the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Anna in the Tropics," at the Boston Center for the Arts through March 26, the romantic relationships between eight people are examined against the famed Tolstoy novel. In addition to exquisite dialogues littered with profound analogies, the play itself is a quintessential example of exactly how strongly a piece of literature can affect people's lives.
But how do the cigars factor in? Set in 1929, Cuban American writer Nilo Cruz uses this historical context to examine the sexy and sultry love lives of his eight characters, all of whom work in a cigar rolling factory in Tampa, Florida.
The play begins with the excitable and eccentric factory owner's wife, Ofelia, played by Bobbie Steinbach, who is hiring (on her own accord) a "lector." Lectors would offer entertainment and enlightenment to the mostly illiterate workers in need of inspiration, making the presence of a lector in a Cuban cigar rolling factory a necessary tradition.
The relaxed and tranquil nature of the owner of the firm and husband of Ofelia is expertly played by Dick Santos, contrasting sharply with his brother and business partner, the difficult and stubborn CheChe (Robert Saoud). Neither man knows about the lector's arrival until the new employee begins work.
The lector, a charismatic man named Juan Julian, decides that the first novel he will read aloud is "Anna Karenina," which excites the workers. As soon as he begins, all of the various characters express their surprise at being able to lose themselves in the cold and wintry world of Russia despite their presence in a humid and tropical Florida.
Being set in the Floridian heat, designer Susan Zeeman Rogers had to create scenery which was both functional and appropriate for both the period and temperature. The laid-back and free-flowing atmosphere truly comes through in the thorough and realistic set. Although the set is lavishly designed, it is easily moved and is flexible enough to be used for multiple scenes and purposes.
Each character has a hot-blooded and fiery temperament which they effortlessly communicate to the other characters and, eventually, to the audience. While some characters are there for the audience to sympathize with on a straightforward basis, others are mysteriously seductive. Each is dark and enigmatic in his own way.
Melinda Lopez plays a brilliant Conchita, whose femininity and sexuality emanate from her persona onstage. She eases in and out of every scene gracefully, and it contributes to her character's intensely seductive nature. Liam Torres is a strong Juan Julian and is able to convey a mature and sophisticated debonair attitude which would captivate any of his fellow characters.
On the other hand, Angela Sperazza, who plays Marela, is clearly an actress who is playing a part for which she is simply too old. Her lackluster performance and overly immature antics onstage, along with a forced, trilling voice are distracting and detrimental to the scenes in which she appears.
"Anna Karenina" is actually a focal point of the play. Much of the dialogue is dedicated to analyzing the novel and the plot of the play encompasses some of the underlying themes of the novel. There are also obvious parallels that are drawn between storylines. This captures the audience's attention and leaves the ending ambiguously dancing between the "real" fate of the factory workers and the literary plot of the novel.
The characters, despite their jobs as cigar rollers, are almost unbelievably intellectual and use a pretty heavy-duty jargon of literary terms for analysis of the book. And while it seems a bit farfetched to see supposedly uneducated laborers discussing classic literature with such fluency, the language is beautiful nevertheless.
