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At last, some content
Loved it on stage!
Overrated Nonsense
A Bit Predictable and Formulaic With A Few Good Moments
"Today we are baptizing our new cigar...Anna Karenina."

Anna in the Tropics
Nilo Cruz
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Winner of the 2003 Pulitizer Prize for Drama

. . . there are many kinds of light.
The light of fires. The light of stars.
The light that reflects off rivers.
Light that penetrates through cracks.
Then there's the type of light that reflects off the skin.
-Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of America in the midst of the Depression. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

"The words of Nilo Cruz waft from the stage like a scented breeze. They sparkle and prickle and swirl, enveloping those who listen in both specific place and time . . . and in timeless passions that touch us all. In Anna in the Tropics, the world premiere work he created for Coral Gables' intimate New Theatre, Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power."-Miami Herald

Nilo Cruz is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States including the Public Theater (New York, NY), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), Magic Theatre (San Francisco, CA), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theater (Princeton, NJ) and New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL). His other plays include Night Train to Bolina, Two Sisters and a Piano, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, among others. Anna in the Tropics also won the Steinberg Award for Best New Play. Mr. Cruz teaches playwriting at Yale University and lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews:

At last, some content.......2006-03-01

Given that most plays should be seen and not read, this play is, for contemporary drama, refreshingly ambitious. It takes on the question of the transformative nature of art in life. Art gives dignity: These people, after all, roll cigars. But in a world of dignified work, they dress to come to work, take pride in their craft, and spend their days listening to performances (like those attending the play, right?), analyzing characters and plot and performers. To be displaced by a machine is not only to lose the craft of their work--the hand-rolled fine cigar displaced by the MacStoagie--but to lose, in the din of tending the machine, the opportunity to listen to performance. Is the bottom line more important than art? The symbolism may be heavy-handed, but the dramatist, after all, must work quickly to make his point. Shakespeare it ain't, but I found it refreshing to read a play with aspirations to lofty content.

Loved it on stage!.......2005-11-14

I saw a university perform it and it blew me away! I saw the reviews and pictures for the broadway production and I feel that the more professional version is not doing the play justice as UTEP did. I still think that it is a beautiful well, written play.

Overrated Nonsense.......2005-08-08

Living near McCarter Theater in Princeton my AP English class got to go see a production of this play while it was still being work-shopped for Broadway.
Afterwards, my teacher asked what we all thought, of course first stating that she loved it so that all of the "favorite" students knew which opinion to take.
They all raised their hands and said they loved it to, however, no one could say why. Why not? Because everyone hated it.
I was the first to open the flood gate.
"I thought it was ridiculous. It has no real substance to the plot."
"That's because the language is the point"
"Well the language is the worst part. Why would poor factory workers speak in absurdly flowery metaphors? Especially ones that stupid ('Does the bicicle miss the boy?')?"
My teacher flipped out at this.
"You don't understand! That's what literature is all about! Metaphors!"
The woman, asides from being a gigantic b**ch, was merely blinded by what reviews had told her to think and by her crush on Jimmy Smitts.
A month later, the New York Times, reviewed the play after its Broadway premiere. They said pretty much exactly what I thought. I was going to bring the review into class, but why bother? The woman already hated me.

PS. One earlier reviewer discussed how it was impossible to determine from the production the the daughter was raped. During a Q&A afterwards, Emily Mann stated that they were having problems deciding how to show this. I agree with the reviewer that they clearly didn't come to a good solution.

A Bit Predictable and Formulaic With A Few Good Moments.......2004-11-24

I haven't seen a production of this play, so I'm judging only by the quality of the text on the page. As stated by a few other reviewers here, the play is just very predictable. Characters are narrowly drawn and perform like puppets used by the playwright to make a point about how the world is about to change from one that is warm and vital to one that is harsh and mechanized. Not exactly breaking new ground here, so it's odd the play earned a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe the production adds nuances that the written text just doesn't have (a good director can make even modest material come alive.) This play felt contrived and agenda-driven, not in a hugely in-your-face way, but more in a piece-of-fluff way. I can't imagine it surprised the author as he was writing it - which isn't good - and it probably won't surprise anyone reading it. It's old news and a bit tired.

"Today we are baptizing our new cigar...Anna Karenina.".......2004-10-07

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Anna in the Tropics recreates the Cuban-American community in Ybor City, Florida, in 1929,with its color, its cockfights, its close relationships, and its love of romance. Santiago and his wife Ofelia own a cigar factory, where the sometimes illiterate workers roll cigars and, to keep from becoming bored, hire a "lector" to read to them. Romantic stories spice up their lives, and since they have finished Wuthering Heights, they now look forward to a new novel, Anna Karenina, read by a new lector, Juan Julian.

Conchita, one of the workers whose marriage with Palomo has grown stale, soon finds herself reenacting Anna Karenina, as she has a passionate affair with Juan Julian, and then tells Palomo about it. Marela, daughter of Santiago and Ofelia, also fantasizes about Juan Julian. Reality intrudes on romance, however, when Santiago's gambling on cockfights results in partial ownership of the factory going to Cheche, his half-brother, who now wants to introduce machines to speed up production. He also wants to eliminate the lector, to the workers' further dismay.

In language that is often lyrical and sometimes fanciful, the action unfolds, with discussions evolving about the nature and importance of literature, the enduring values of their culture, the importance of love, and the possible effects of "progress" on traditional values. The characters, though not fully drawn and sometimes too obviously following plot lines of Anna Karenina, are, nevertheless, interesting and unusual as they try to do the best they can during trying times. To celebrate their happiness with the story of Anna Karenina, they decide to create a new cigar in her honor, and to have Marela serve as the model for the cigar box, but their happiness is as fragile and temporary as the idea of a "family" of workers making cigars without machines.

When disaster strikes, it affects the entire factory, and the characters must decide to what extent it is possible to remain in a fantasy world when reality has reared its ugly head, and to what extent it is possible to hold on to the past when the survival of the factory may depend on progress. The obvious themes, their rather thin development, and the plot lines which parallel Anna Karenina show playwright Nilo Cruz's desire to give significance to this tragedy, though the characters do not develop fully on their own. Unique and unusual in its approach, however, the play beautifully captures a time and place in history. Mary Whipple

In the Trades, the Tropics, & the Roaring Forties / by Lady Brassey

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In the Trades, the Tropics, & the Roaring Forties / by Lady Brassey
Anna (Allnutt), Baroness Brassey Brassey
Manufacturer: Longmans, Green
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KVDWSQ

Best of Bermuda: sun, sights, and a gourmet taste of the tropics.(FIRST-CLASS TICKET) : An article from: Black Enterprise

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Best of Bermuda: sun, sights, and a gourmet taste of the tropics.(FIRST-CLASS TICKET) : An article from: Black Enterprise
Lee Anna Jackson
Manufacturer: Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Black Enterprise, published by Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc. on June 1, 2005. The length of the article is 535 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Best of Bermuda: sun, sights, and a gourmet taste of the tropics.(FIRST-CLASS TICKET)
Author: Lee Anna Jackson
Publication: Black Enterprise (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2005
Publisher: Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc.
Volume: 35 Issue: 11 Page: 310(1)

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Nilo Cruz's "Anna in the Tropics": A Study Guide from Gale's "Drama for Students" (Volume 21, Chapter 2)

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Nilo Cruz's "Anna in the Tropics": A Study Guide from Gale's "Drama for Students" (Volume 21, Chapter 2)

Manufacturer: The Gale Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Anna in the Tropics

ASIN: B0009JJ83M
Release Date: 2005-04-27

Book Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Drama for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Thomson Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; plot summary; character analysis; an overview of the play's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Drama for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Drama for Students."

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Anna and The Tropics
Nilo Cruz
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group, 2003
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J0UERU

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