literature stirs the emotions
by Douglas Messerli
Nilo Cruz Anna
of the Tropics / produced by Open Fist Theatre Company, performed at the Atwater
Village Theater / the performance I attended was on May 5, 2019
The family business of these characters—Santiago (Steve Wilcox), his
wife Ofelia (Jill Remez), their daughters Conchita (Presciliana Esparolini) and
Marela (Jade Santana), along with Santiago’s angry half-brother Cheché (Antonio
Jaramillo), and Conchita’s husband Palomo (Javi Mulero)—is cigar-making, the old-fashioned
way, rolled by hand, a process we literarily witness several times throughout
this play.
This family, moreover, is rolling its Cuban cigars not in Havana but in
the 1929 Ybor City, Florida, a neighborhood of Tampa, with the Depression, we
all know, a year away. Even family members perceive that the famed cigars they
are creating are losing out to cigarettes (fags) smoked now by most of the
movie stars. In short there is a sense of doom already hanging over their
entire enterprise. They live in a past that is no longer relevant in the
decaying American climate.
They stubbornly stick to their Cuban traditions, however, with Ofelia
demanding they hire a “Lectore de Tabaqueres,” a reader who, while the workers
repeat their endless manual activities, enchants and sometimes distracts them
with wonderful stories. The lector she hires, Juan Julian (the excellent Byron
Quiros) chooses to first read for them the great Tolstoy novel, which almost
from the first page—a bit like Madame Bovary’s encounters with novels—begins to
utterly change the women’s lives.
Suddenly, the romantic heroine’s passions and liaisons leaps from the
cold Russian landscape into the humid factory in which they are entrapped. As
the summer in which they are working grows hotter, so to do their emotions, as
the handsome reader Juan fans the flames with his story-telling skills,
resulting eventually in a sexual tryst with Conchita about which her
philandering husband quickly becomes aware.
The men are suddenly less important in the mother’s and two daughter’s
lives, and their macho attitudes begin to make demands on familial
relationships. Santiago, somehow (we never quite know) finds enough money to
pay back his debt, and tries to regain control of his small patriarchally based
business by throwing a celebration, replete with rum, lanterns, and an
announcement that he is creating a new blend of cigars to be called Anna
Karenina, using his youngest daughter Marela, dressed in a mink coat and
Russian hat, as the model for the new brand. Surely there is something slightly
incestual about his sudden attentions.
Marela, shocked by the experience, now becomes the frigid Anna, wearing
her heavy coat even in the tropical climate in which the family must labor.
Palomo confronts his wife Conchita about her affair, which she explains
has only helped, in bringing love back into her life, to reconfirm her love for
her own husband by allowing her to feel more as a sexual equal. In a strange
twist of story that Cruz only hints of, Palomo demands that she describe all
her feelings when she is sexually involved with Julian, suggesting a kind of
obsession with his rival, which, in turn, hints at possible homosexual
feelings. Even his wife wonders about his continual interest in his rival’s
sexual attractions.
All of these complex issues literally boil over, in both Chekhovian and
Tolstoyian ways—meaning that they become both somewhat comical and tragic—when
Cheché, late for work suddenly arrives with a gun in hand, shooting Julian
dead.
To
reveal just how Chekhovian Cruz’s play is, the tragic-stricken survivors remain
determined to keep their traditions. With no lector now in view, Palomo offers
to continue reading Anna Karenina to
the workers, thus further linking himself to Julian, finally taking over his
role and perhaps his sexual allure to both the women and him.
Director Jon Lawrence Rivera has brought this obviously ensemble-based
cast to move in patterns that might even suggest a dance, entering, exiting,
and returning together to work and play by using the entire Atwater Village
Theater space. And scenic designer Christopher Scott Murillo has created a set
that alternates between a sweat-house factory, a home, and a kind of cathedral
(reinforced by the shifting colors of the lights by lighting designer Matt
Richer). As for the costumes (by Mylette Nora), who can ever forget Marela in
her heavy black coat in a world which the other figures dress in light whites?
Finally, I have to salute artistic director Martha Demson and the
collaborative Open Fist group for continuing to produce such innovative and
challenging theater.
Los Angeles, May 6, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (May 2019).
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