Nilo Cruz’s poignant and poetic 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play captures 1929 Florida at a time when cigars were still rolled by hand and lectors were employed to educate and entertain the immigrant workers. The arrival of a new lector is cause for celebration, but when he reads Anna Karenina to the cigar rollers, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics and the American dream prove a volatile combination.
April 27 through June 8: Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039; $20-$30; (323) 882-6912; www.openfist.org
Anna in the Tropics
Critics
LemonMeter
Reviews: 11
Reviews
I have to salute artistic director Martha Demson and the collaborative Open Fist group for continuing to produce such innovative and challenging theater.
Cruz’s poetic dialogue matches the timelessness of literature itself and wafts through your senses like a balmy breeze, even as this decent production at Atwater Village isn’t as steamy and profound as it could have been. While the casting and direction by Jon Lawrence Rivera isn’t always accurate for Open Fist Theatre Company, we definitely experience some sultry and stirring moments that make up for those which are overwrought or misguided or lacking tension or power or specificity. Overall, you’ll be glad you saw this beautiful work.
A production of Open Fist Theatre company, the play is filled with love, lust and dreams...
Director Jon Lawrence Rivera paces the action, building to a startling climax.
This is an excellent cast guided with skill and compassion by director Jon Lawrence Rivera. But the ending of the play is incongruous and quite jarring, after almost two acts of passion and quixotic language.
Open Fist’s Anna in the Tropics blossoms as beautifully as a mariposa…sultry and exquisite. - Highly Recommended
Open Fist Theatre Company’s lovely revival proves that Tolstoy isn’t the only Russian literary giant presiding over the ruin of this Cuban American family. Like Chekhov, Cruz situates his characters on the brink of cataclysmic change: A new, not necessarily better, era is dawning.
A very talent-balanced cast pulls us into their lives, and the evening of voyeurism is well spent on this drama.
This production recalls for us not only the many gifts that immigrants carry with them but the deep conflicts and complications that they often encounter here. - RECOMMENDED
Go see this play! The very talented cast brought this beautiful, lyrical, romantic Pulitzer prize-winning play to life. The set, costumes, lighting, and sound design were all great as well. The show is full of both humor and passion. The story involves a Cuban American family that runs a small cigar factory in Tampa in 1929 as the advent of mechanization threatens the existence of the traditions ways, including the use of lectors to read novels to the workers the monotony. This show is better than anything I've seen at the Taper this year.
Not only is Anna In The Tropics Los Angeles membership theater at its finest, it's the best all-around production I've seen from Open Fist in years, and for those familiar with the company's nearly three decades of excellence on the L.A. theater scene, that is high praise indeed.
...as my better half and I strolled to the car for the ride home, I conjectured that the play is Shakespearean, even biblical, with a flawed king, his ambitious bastard half-brother, straying marital partners, and a charismatic stranger who upsets whatever fragile balance was extant.
ANNA IN THE TROPICS is a great play. It is the story that got Cruz his 2003 Pulitzer Prize and put him in the limelight. It's nicely delivered at the Open Fist Company, and I'm sure that you will enjoy it.
I have to salute artistic director Martha Demson and the collaborative Open Fist group for continuing to produce such innovative and challenging theater.
Cruz’s poetic dialogue matches the timelessness of literature itself and wafts through your senses like a balmy breeze, even as this decent production at Atwater Village isn’t as steamy and profound as it could have been. While the casting and direction by Jon Lawrence Rivera isn’t always accurate for Open Fist Theatre Company, we definitely experience some sultry and stirring moments that make up for those which are overwrought or misguided or lacking tension or power or specificity. Overall, you’ll be glad you saw this beautiful work.
A production of Open Fist Theatre company, the play is filled with love, lust and dreams...
Director Jon Lawrence Rivera paces the action, building to a startling climax.
This is an excellent cast guided with skill and compassion by director Jon Lawrence Rivera. But the ending of the play is incongruous and quite jarring, after almost two acts of passion and quixotic language.
Open Fist’s Anna in the Tropics blossoms as beautifully as a mariposa…sultry and exquisite. - Highly Recommended
Open Fist Theatre Company’s lovely revival proves that Tolstoy isn’t the only Russian literary giant presiding over the ruin of this Cuban American family. Like Chekhov, Cruz situates his characters on the brink of cataclysmic change: A new, not necessarily better, era is dawning.
A very talent-balanced cast pulls us into their lives, and the evening of voyeurism is well spent on this drama.
This production recalls for us not only the many gifts that immigrants carry with them but the deep conflicts and complications that they often encounter here. - RECOMMENDED
Not only is Anna In The Tropics Los Angeles membership theater at its finest, it's the best all-around production I've seen from Open Fist in years, and for those familiar with the company's nearly three decades of excellence on the L.A. theater scene, that is high praise indeed.
...as my better half and I strolled to the car for the ride home, I conjectured that the play is Shakespearean, even biblical, with a flawed king, his ambitious bastard half-brother, straying marital partners, and a charismatic stranger who upsets whatever fragile balance was extant.
ANNA IN THE TROPICS is a great play. It is the story that got Cruz his 2003 Pulitzer Prize and put him in the limelight. It's nicely delivered at the Open Fist Company, and I'm sure that you will enjoy it.
Go see this play! The very talented cast brought this beautiful, lyrical, romantic Pulitzer prize-winning play to life. The set, costumes, lighting, and sound design were all great as well. The show is full of both humor and passion. The story involves a Cuban American family that runs a small cigar factory in Tampa in 1929 as the advent of mechanization threatens the existence of the traditions ways, including the use of lectors to read novels to the workers the monotony. This show is better than anything I've seen at the Taper this year.