Last night, we saw the play Anna in the Tropics at the Pasadena Playhouse. Loads of reviews are available on the web, so this is more my impressions of the play.
The logo of the play shows a lady dressed as Anna Karenina, who is a central character in this story, while being only a character in a book. The play concerns a family that owns and operates a cigar factory: the father owns the company, his brother manages it, his wife and two daughters, as well as a son-in-law, work in the factory. Cigar rolling is boring work in the 1910-1920 timeframe, and so the family has followed Cuban tradition and hired a lector to read to the works. The book chosen to be read is Anna Karenina.
This story seems to take over the lives of the characters. The younger daughter is infactuated by the lector, but he doesn’t even notice her as a woman. He even just kisses her on the head. The older daughter, however, is a different story. The older daughter’s husband is having an affair. They don’t want to divorce (too much trouble with the church, among things), so she decides to get even… with the lector. He happily obliges. She then goes back to her husband with what she has learned from the lector, but the trust has been broken. This parallels what happened with Anna in the story: she cheated on her husband, and her husband explored a duel.
The subplot concerns whether the factory should modernize by getting machinery. The brother of the owner is for it; the owner and the other workers against it. The real reason that he wants to mechanize is to get rid of the lector, for his wife ran off with a lector. Instead the owner decides to use the story to introduce a new brand of cigar: Anna Karenina, and have the younger daughter model for the picture. After the celebratory party, where there is too much rum, the brother apparently rapes the younger daughter. It appears he has snapped at this point, for in the next scene, while the lector is reading the portion of the story about the husband getting a gun and planning a duel, the brother shoots and kills the lector. The family mourns, and goes back to the story.
My opinion: It was well acted, but the story didn’t grab me. It left me wandering away going “weird”. So, it was OK, but not something I would have paid to seen had it not been part of the subscription. All the cigar smoking on stage bothered me as well, but that’s me.
The actors, for the most part, were good. Apollo Dukakis (Santiago, the father) [brother of Olympia Dukakis] was OK, but showed little enthusiasm at the end. Al Espinosa (Juan Julian, the lector) was a handsome figure in wife. He played his role well. Javi Mulero (Cheche) was OK in the bad guy part. I found Timothy Paul Perez’s role confusing, but that’s because I see looking at the program that he actually played two characters I could never tell apart. As for the women… my favorite part of the show. Karmin Murcelo (Ofelia) played the mother quite well. Jacqueline Duprey (Conchita) played the Anna analogue, and was quite good. Adriana Gaviria (Marela) was just a cutie, and I loved her facial expressions. From a google search, it appears these actors stay together and do this play all over the country. The play was short: It started around 9:05pm, and was out by 11:15pm.
