APT's 'Anna in the Tropics' brings the heat - in subtle ways

Dan Koehn, Isthmus

It was the ideal sultry weather in Spring Green for the opening night of Anna in the Tropics, where the air was thick enough to mirror the heat onstage. The American Players Theatre cast transformed the Hill Theatre into a cigar factory, full of dreams and what-ifs. This evening of theater was a master class in ensemble work, built not on flourishes but on a shared pulse that brought the narrative to life.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics, literature enters the workplace through a traditional figure called the lector, who reads Anna Karenina aloud to the workers of a Tampa cigar factory. This time-honored practice offers a bridge to a world beyond the factory walls, providing more than just entertainment for the literate — it’s a new kind of connection for those who can’t read, enabling them to listen, memorize and recite. It’s a ritual that mirrors the spirit of Wisconsin Public Radio’s Chapter a Day, which has been bringing literary works into homes since 1931. In this case, the tradition unfolds in the heat and hum of a 1920s factory.

Juan Julian (Ronald Román-Meléndez), the lector, is part lover, part salesman — and the selling works. His arrival disrupts the uneasy equilibrium between Santiago (Triney Sandoval), the factory owner who gambles away his earnings, and his wife, Ofelia (Elizabeth Ledo), who uses her share of the profits to pay the lector’s salary. Their daughters — dreamy Marela (Phoebe González) and restless Conchita (Melisa Pereyra) — are drawn in different ways to both the Anna Karenina he reads and the man himself, while Conchita’s husband Palomo (Yona Moises Olivares) wrestles with jealousy and desire. Meanwhile, Santiago’s half-brother Cheché (Sam Luis Massaro) pushes to replace the lector with a machine.

The novel Juan Julian reads is no accident. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is steeped in passion, betrayal, social constraint, and the cost of following the heart — themes that begin to mirror and magnify the lives of the factory workers. A question emerges: Will an affair save a marriage, or destroy what’s left of it? Literature has a way of bringing out the best and worst in us.

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