‘Anna in the Tropics’
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, September 30, 2004
Fine Cuban cigars were once rolled by hand. And the workers who made them in the cigar factories were often illiterate.
People called lectors were hired to read to the workers, to help them pass the time as they toiled. The reading material might be a newspaper or a literary classic – Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” for example.
Cuban-born playwright Nilo Cruz turned this story into his own modern classic when he wrote “Anna in the Tropics,” a poetic drama that premiered in 2002 at a small theater in Coral Gables, Fla., then surprised the theater world by winning the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
The play put Cruz on the map. “Anna in the Tropics” had a full New York production starring Jimmy Smits and became a hot commodity in regional theaters across the country, praised for its language and exotic setting.
The Seattle Repertory Theatre opens its 2004-2005 season Wednesday with “Anna,” and director Sharon Ott says audiences are in for an evening of both drama and a level of poetic writing that’s surprising and refreshing.
“There are not that many people writing now in self-consciously poetic manner,” said Ott, who has known Cruz and his work for a number of years, and gave his play “Beauty of the Father” its world premiere at the Rep this spring.
“There is a beautiful universality to the poetic images,” she said.
“Anna” is set in a Florida cigar factory in 1929 where expatriate Cubans are hand-rolling cigars the traditional way, all the while facing the impending mechanization of cigar-making that will overturn their world.
Juan Julian is the lector who arrives from Cuba to read to the workers, and his choice of reading material has profound implications for the men and women who work in the factory.
The reading of “Anna Karenina” sets off a series of events in the personal lives of the workers, as Cruz blends passages from Tolstoy’s story of a tragic woman who destroys her life for love that parallel what’s happening in the hothouse atmosphere of the cigar factory.
“The play has a great story at its core,” Ott said.
And the central love triangle of “Anna Karenina” is central to the story of “Anna of the Tropics.”
“The themes of revenge, shame and guilt are certainly echoed,” she said. Tolstoy was writing about social change, and so is Cruz.
Ott presides over her final season as the Rep’s artistic director; in June she announced she would step down at the end of this season.
The last couple of years have been tough, with the Rep like many other Seattle arts organizations scrambling to survive the economic recession, cutting its season and its budget as theater audiences hunkered down and stayed at home, especially after Sept. 11, 2001.
The Rep has weathered the storm and this year has recorded its biggest subscription renewal rate in four years, Ott said. “Last January it started to feel like the audience was coming back.”
With the surge in ticket sales, the Rep announced eight plays for the 2004-05 season, up from last season’s six productions. There are six mainstage plays and two in the smaller Leo K. Theatre.
The offerings include Richard Greenberg’s Tony-winning “Take Me Out” about a gay major league baseball player who comes out in the locker room. Expect nudity and hot ticket sales.
Single tickets are on sale for the entire Rep season, as well as full subscriptions.
And the classic Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off” is a backstage farce about a troupe of has-been actors trying to put on a British sex farce.
Also scheduled are “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” August Wilson’s 1984 blues-infused drama, set in Chicago in the 1920s, and “The Constant Wife,” a Somerset Maugham play from the 1920s that dissects modern marriage.
Chris Bennion photo
Bryant Mason is Juan Julian, Paolo Andino is Palomo, Tanya Perez is Marela and Romy Dias is Conchita in Seattle Repertory Theatre’s presentation of “Anna in the Tropics.”
Rep director Sharon Ott.
“Anna in the Tropics”
Seattle Repertory Theatre production Wednesday through Oct. 30 at the Bagley Wright Theatre, Seattle Center. Tickets, $10-$46, 206-443-2222, 877-900-9285, www.seattlerep.org.
“Anna in the Tropics”
Seattle Repertory Theatre production Wednesday through Oct. 30 at the Bagley Wright Theatre, Seattle Center. Tickets, $10-$46, 206-443-2222, 877-900-9285, www.seattlerep.org.
