Anna in the Tropics @ Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas
—Jill Sweeney
“Literary reveries are related to cigar smoke—both permit one to escape the weight of the world and defy the laws of gravity.”—Nilo Cruz, “The Alphabet of Smoke”
For all its short run time onstage, Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics strains at the seams with big ideas: modernity and the loss of tradition, the immigrant experience in America, the power of the written word, relationships between men and women at each stage of life…and the list could go on.
It’s challenging, this script. So much bubbles under the surface of each character’s journey to the play’s end, which somehow feels both inevitable and startling. It’s quite tricky to stage a play suffused with yearning for two hours, and it’s certainly a bold choice for any company right now, as the pandemic forces many theaters to tack towards a safe and reliable middle when choosing their seasons. Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas’ production, while uneven in places, still manages to capture the poetry and longing at the heart of Cruz’s work.
The workers at the Alcalar Cigar factory are impatient for the arrival of their new lectore—the reader whose words will transport them from the stifling heat of a Florida summer, rolling cigars day after day, to the steppes of Russia and beyond. Matriarch Ofelia (Claudia Shelton), the wife of factory owner Santiago (Michael Corolla), has paid for a new lectore to make the crossing from Cuba to Florida to read to her husband’s workers as they roll cigars, an old tradition brought to the New World.
The workers include her daughters, dreamy Marela (Jessica Lomas) and unhappily married Conchita (Monica Perez), whose husband Palomo (Xander Davila) is having an affair.
Also in the mix is Cheche (Rudy Lopez), Santiago’s newly discovered half-brother, whose wife ran off with a lectore, leaving him with an understandable grudge against the profession. Into this combustible setting comes Juan Julian (Danny Lovelle), the new lectore—handsome, well-spoken, and bound to stir up trouble. As he charms the workers with passages from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Juan Julian inspires passion in some and resentment in others, with dire consequences.
The cast, directed by Dennis Yslas and sumptuously costumed in 1920s finery with a Cuban flair (kudos to costume designer Jessi Chavez), has great energy in the larger group scenes, and pays close attention to depicting the characters’ various Spanish-influenced accents. Scenes between couples vary in their effectiveness. Shelton and especially Corolla shine in their one scene alone, capturing the quarrelsome but loving dynamic between the older, established couple. The scenes with Lovelle’s Juan Julian and Perez’s Conchita spark and smolder. (The last sexually charged moment between the couple in Act One prompted a few gasps from the audience.) But there seems to be a bit of a mismatch in chemistry between Perez and her philandering husband Palomo (Xander Davila), one that leaves a few key emotional moments in the piece feeling hollow.
Despite the occasional misstep, it was a pleasure to see Cruz’s wistful ode to the lost art of cigar rolling (and so much more) up on its feet—and played with passion and verve by Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas’ talented ensemble.
WHEN: Though February 5
WHERE: The Dupree Theatre, 3333 N MacArthur Bldv, Irving, TX 75062
WEB: mainstageirving.com
