APT's 'Anna in the Tropics' sparks with poetry and passion

Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times

A cigar circles the stage, passed from person to person with the solemnity of a common cup at communion. Each smoker exhales in his or her own way — eyes squeezed shut or open with anticipation, excited or solemn, thoughtful, entranced.

This moment, late in “Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz, carries the weight of a sacred ritual. Running at American Players Theatre through Sept. 26, “Anna” lifts stories and cigars into something like holiness.

Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this play, a love letter to literature set in 1929 Ybor City, in Tampa, Florida. Josafath Reynoso’s cigar factory set is gorgeous and infinitely detailed, brick archways and decorative cigar ads framing low wooden desks on wheels where the workers stuff, roll and wrap cigars by hand.

Cigar rollers in Florida brought the tradition of lectors with them from Cuba — think early audiobooks with in-person readers. When “Anna” opens, a dashing new reader named Juan Julian (Ronald Román-Meléndez) has sailed from the island, 19th century great novels in tow, to upset the delicate balance at Santiago’s (Triney Sandoval’s) family business.

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