Anna in the Tropics

Never underestimate the power of Tolstoy.
Never underestimate the power of Tolstoy. That's the painful lesson learned by the characters in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize–winning play, set in a Tampa, Florida, cigar-making factory in 1929. Cuban-American exiles Ofelia and Santiago run their family business according to time-honored traditions. Workers hand roll each cigar while a lector reads to them to pass the time. However, when handsome new lector Juan Julian arrives, his selection of the classic Anna Karenina stirs up passions in his listeners as powerful as those of the novel's adulterous heroine. The couple's daughter Conchita strays from her cheating husband Palomo into the arms of Juan, while her younger sister Marela dreams of visiting Moscow to find romance. And Cheché, Santiago's half-brother, smolders sullenly in the wings, having lost his wife to another smooth-talking lector. Cruz's language is as lyrical as the Russian masters the play invokes. The heat clinging to the characters' emotions and entanglements is audible in the voices of the actors, particularly Jimmy Smits, reprising the part of Juan he played on Broadway.