ANNA IN THE TROPICS


Illicit passions set a Florida cigar factory aflame in Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna Of The Tropics, the dramatic latest from A Noise Within.

The year is 1929 and the city is Tampa, a destination favored by Cuban émigrés whose skill at the centuries-old art of making cigars by hand has allowed them to forge new lives in factories like the one owned by Santiago (Leandro Cano), first seen mid-cockfight and losing money as fast as his bad luck will allow.

Meanwhile at the Tampa harbor, Santiago’s wife Ofelia (Rose Portillo) and the couple’s two adult daughters Conchita (Tania Verafield), married to Palomo (Matias Ponce), and the still single Marela (Katie Rodriguez) find themselves eagerly awaiting the arrival of the factory’s new lector, hired to keep the workers entertained by reading aloud from literary classics like Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

And who better to ignite similar adulterous lust amongst the three women than debonair hunk Juan Julian (Jason Manuel Olazábal), at least four decades younger than the late lamented Teodoro and oozing sex appeal that doesn’t sit well with Santiago’s half-brother Cheché (Gabriel Bonilla), whose wife Mildred left him for Teodoro’s immediate successor.

Now partial owner of Santiago’s factory thanks to the latter’s gambling debts, Cheché would like nothing better than to modernize the establishment, including installing machines to do work now performed by hand and getting rid of any potentially wife-stealing lector.

All Cheché needs now is the factory workers’ support, though that may be easier said than done.

Playwright Cruz, director Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx, and a topnotch cast transport A Noise Within audiences to another time, another place in a story that illustrates the power of the written word to transform, empower, inflame, and destroy human lives.

Performances are uniformly terrific, from Verafield, who gradually reveals dormant desires set aflame by Olazábal’s charismatic Juan Julian; to Cano’s hard-working, chivalrous Santiago opposite Latina stage legend Portillo’s deeply loving deeply loyal Ofelia; to Rodriguez’s Marela, whose passions hide just below a good-girl façade; to Ponce as both the cuckolded, possibly closeted Palomo and spirited cockfight announcer Eliades; to Bonilla as the embittered, borderline bonkers Cheché.

And unlike the play’s previous local revival, director Muñoz-Proulx doesn’t feel the need to have his actors the affect thick Cuban accents they’d have if if they were speaking English as a second language and not conversing fluently in their native tongue.

The current production does suffer somewhat from A Noise Within’s high-ceilinged, thrust-stage configuration, which prevents scenic designer Tanya Orellana from giving Anna In The Tropics the claustrophobic atmosphere that earlier revival offered.

Missing too are the earlier production’s additional two cast members, whose presence on stage gave Santiago’s factory a more populated factory feel.

Shen Heckel’s just-right properties range from tobacco leaves ready to be rolled to firearms ready to be shot, Jeff Gardner’s sound design effectively ups the dramatic stakes (with additional guitar composition by Bruno Loucharaun), and Tom Ontiveros’s lighting is often quite gorgeous indeed.

Best of all are E.B. Brooks’ period costumes, a mix of late-1920s fashion and Cuban flair, and Sheila Dorn’s matching wigs and makeup.

Carly D. Weckstein’s intimacy direction ensures that actors involved in simulated sexual activity feel protected while Kenneth R. Merckx, Jr.’s fight choreography does the same where stage violence is concerned.

Alex Alpharaoh, Javi Mulero, Alexander Pimentel, Byron Quiros, Jill Remez, and Erika Soto are understudies.

Taylor Anne Cullen is stage manager and Maricela Sahagun is assistant stage manager.

Anna In The Tropics may have debuted a mere nineteen years ago, but with its picturesque early 20th-century setting, its Greek Tragedy-worthy passions, and its Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it amply fulfills A Noise Within’s promise of “Classic Theatre, Modern Magic.”

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
April 10, 2022
Photos: Craig Schwartz

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