Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Good Smoke


Reviewed 10/30/04

Have you ever watched an audience go crazy over something that you could have taken or left or finally seen something that everyone tells you is an absolute masterpiece and felt stupid because you thought it was pretty good but weren’t wowed? That was my reaction to Arizona Theatre Company’s latest offering of Nilo Cruz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics. The play was reported as “steamy,” “magical,” and “intoxicating.” How could your expectations not be raised by such accolades? The potentially highly charged elements of Cuban émigrés, Russian literature, and American greed imply explosive. As I sat watching a character play that didn’t seem too interested in deeply exploring its characters, I wondered if there were darker depths to what I was watching but wasn’t inspired to plumb. Don’t get me wrong, Cruz’ offering has its moments, but I didn’t see a lot more to this than the type of daytime drama you’d find on Telemundo. I feel absolutely guilty in reacting this way. What did I miss?

Richard Hamburger has done an excellent job in staging this overwrought seven-character tale of love, lust, jealousy, spite, duplicity, tradition, and longing set in the cigar factories of 1929 Tampa. On the eve of the decline of the hand-rolling industry, just before automation killed this craft, a lector is hired to read to the workers. He comes from a long line of lectors reading news and literature to the hard-working and mostly illiterate employees who pay his keep without the help of management. This lector, young idealistic hunk Juan Julian (Al Espinosa), reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which causes the workers to question their own staid lives and unchecked passions. The result is explosive in good ways and bad.

The script asks its actors to fly though a lot of emotions, often broadly, quickly, and consecutively within a scene. Hamburger has his cast play at levels that fit the image of the hot-blooded. Minor crises become novellas and larger issues balloon into tragedies and triumphs of classic proportions. Juan’s reading drives a schism between factory owner Santiago (Apollo Dukakis) and his progressive and recently jilted half-brother Cheché (Javi Mulero), lusty-but-trapped older daughter Conchita (Jaqueline Duprey) and her uncaring husband Palomo (Tim Perez), while awakening the passions of Santiago’s wife Ofelia (Karmín Murcelo) and youngest daughter Marela (Adriana Gaviria). This consciousness- and passion-raising can only lead to trouble and changes to the status quo.

Hamburger’s movement is very unique and extremely frenetic. You won’t learn much about the static and quiet art of hand rolling, but it will keep your eye engaged. He asks scenic designer Chris Barreca to create a circular battleground that he turns into part human cockfighting ring and part clock ticking down the minutes to doom, retribution, and redemption. The young girls spin around the stage as their passions rise while the men skulk around the edges desiring, regretting, and jealously plotting. The actors are all quite adept. Espinosa is broad-shouldered and upright, Mulero is bravado covering pain. Dukakis moves from broken man to factory master while Murcelo offers a strong matriarch whose only flaw in performance comes as she tries to play a scene progressively drunker. Perez plays Palomo in a minor key, a contrast to Gaviria’s whirlwind of extremes as Marela.

Miguel Angel Huidor’s costumes capture quite well the Cubans of 1920s Tampa, and Peter Maradudin’s lighting has exceptional moments feeling ever-overheated. Fitz Patton’s sound and compositions commendably support the play.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy this evening. The broad proceedings give hints at deeper anxieties and sexual politics. Some moments sparkled. However, I can’t help but feel that despite the high praise heaped upon this work, in the end this script feels about as substantial as the smoke that drifts from the end of an excellent cigar.