Anna In The Tropics By Nilo Cruz

Love and Revenge in Anna in the Tropics

The Queens Community College Theatre, on Friday March 16th, 2018, staged a performance of Anna in the Tropics, a two-act play by Nilo Cruz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2003. This play is based on a true story, which took place in Tampa, Florida in 1929. Two characters, Santiago and his spouse Ofelia, owned a cigar factory. As shown in the story, one of the traditions of the Cuban cigar factories is that the workers hire a lector or a reader at their own expense to read, to inform and to entertain them while they are rolling cigars. In the play, the story that is read is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. And as the story of Anna Karenina unfolded, so too did the story of Anna in the Tropics,
It shows Santiago and his brother Chester gambling over a cockfight in the beginning. Literature is also remarkable. Since the workers don’t have any formal education, they learn from the readings of Anna Karenina. Infidelity and love are also important in the play. Conchita is in love with Palomo, but Palomo was cheating on her by dating other women. Conchita has been unfaithful too by having an affair with Juan Julian. Tradition and modernization are in perpetual challenge as well. In the tradition, Cuban women used to cut their hair and planted it at the feet of a tree. Cigar factories have a lector who reads for the workers. Chéché, constantly, tries to convince Santiago and the workers to accept machinery in order to suppress the position of the lector. Palomo decides to challenge the lover of his wife by conquering Conchita back. Chéché ruminates his revenge at the point that he becomes completely absorbed by it and he kills Juan Julian by shooting
It catalyses the life of the workers in the factory. Love gains the hearts of the characters more than the smoke in the factory except Chéché. It seems like everyone had lost the sense of love for a while, but Juan Julian comes and removes the veil that covers the love in their hearts by reading Anna Karenina. As this passage is highlighting it, “Ah yes! (Levin) He’s in love with Kitty. Levin is in love with Kitty and Kitty is in love with Vronsky. And Vronsky is in love with Anna Karenina. And Anna Karenina is married, but she’s in love with Vronsky. Ay, everybody is in love in this book!” (18). The mystery of love fills the heart of everyone. It seems like a “food chain” except that in this case it is “love” and the characters in the novel are ecstatic. The reading and interpretation of Anna Karenina brings to light dysfunctional relationships of the workers. The unfaithful Palomo finds himself challenged by another man. Conchita loves Palomo, but Palomo doesn’t love her in return. Finally Palomo and Conchita got together again. Love unites people and in the meantime it makes them do things that they are supposed to do like adultery. Being in love with someone, is compared to being overcome by a power that can lead the two lovers to surrender to death. Love can drive someone to commit a