Anna In The Tropics
Pre-radio, pre-piped muzak, pre-iPod, and pre-post-industrialisation and permanent unemployment, there were workers who would actually pay a man to come to their factories and read aloud to them while they worked. The storyteller was called a lector and the workers were Cuban cigar makers - either domiciled on the island or scattered to the US's southern states, especially Florida.
That's the start point for Nilo Cruz's 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Anna in the Tropics. From this little gem of social history trivia the Cuban-born American playwright has teased and woven a story of such richness and fascination it would have been worthy of a lector's attention. (And no wonder the Pulitzer judges chose it, making Cruz the first Latino to win the drama prize.)
Anna is set in a small cigar manufactory in the Latin quarter of Tampa, Florida. It's 1929 - just before the Crash - and although they don't know it, the hardworking, hard-drinking, cockfighting, music and dance loving rowdy family world of Santiago (Lani Tupu) and Ofelia (Dina Panozzo) is about to collide headlong with the realities of the 20th century.
With their daughters Conchita (Zoe Carides) and Marela (Christina Falsone), cousin Eliades (Rom Gulla) and Conchita’s husband Palomo (Steve Vella), they hand roll cigars the old-fashioned way. To the disgust of Santiago’s half brother Cheche (Nicholas Papademetriou), they are oblivious to newfangled automation and the demands of a changing market. Cigars were made this way back in old Havana and Ofelia, in particular, can see no good reason to modernise. Especially if it means getting rid of the lector who, she points out, would be inaudible above the racket of machinery anyway. Meanwhile, Cheche glowers ineffectually from the sidelines.
Enter the new lector, Juan Julian (Radek Jonak). He brings with him Anna Karenina, a book which is as much a catalyst for change and danger as is the classic dramatic device of the outsider's arrival. Although ill-educated, barely literate and - by the standards of the prevailing American dream - poor and underprivileged, the cigar-workers are richer in their inner lives than could be imagined by the lumpen factory fodder of the host culture.
What unfolds, as Juan Julian begins to read Tolstoy's classic, is doubly enthralling as the story and the circumstances of its telling weave magic, black and white, about all listeners. Cruz has written a dazzling play of poetry and fire. (And - praise be - the play is theatrical!) The language sizzles with imagery and laughter. He has also avoided the obvious and audience assumptions are most likely to be wrong. The characters are three-dimensional and under Papademetriou's direction, the cast embrace their roles with heart and conviction: they believe, so we believe.
The casting of Panozzo and Tupu, as the fiesty matriarch and well-meaning but clodhopping patriarch, gives the play a sparkling yet earthy centre around which the others revolve. By way of contrast, the secret-sad serenity of Carides' Conchita is a beautiful foil for Vella's barely concealed animosity and the journey these two undergo will be familiar to - if not acknowledged by - many couples.
[page]Newcomers Jonak (fresh out of WAAPA and his debut in Sydney), Falsone and Gulla all say a lot that's good for the casting process of this production. They bring freshness to the stage - literally - and also deliver considered performances which contribute to the ultimate experience of a fine night in the theatre.
Nilo Cruz has written many plays which have been staged with great success across the USA and internationally. So, given the voracious appetite for foreign material displayed by all our major companies, it's perplexing that his work hasn't been seen here before. Even this one, a major prize winner, has only reached the stage through the determined efforts of an independent (Demetriou - does the man never sleep?) and B Sharp after thumbs-downs from the big companies. It can't be about the quality of the play, so perhaps it really is because it's about a mob of wogs. Perhaps it's just too difficult - despite the wealth of fabulous non-Anglo actors in this country.
When it comes down to it, we're still not very far beyond the burnt cork days of casting. I mean, bless his cotton socks, David Field, for instance, is a marvellous actor, but casting him as an New York-Italian dude in A View From the Bridge was, what ... Unimaginative? Insulting? Perfectly okay? What's my problem?
The problem with casting without reference to the ethnic origin of the actor is that it almost invariably works just one way: non-Anglo actors are rarely cast in roles where ethnicity is unspecified. How many bank teller, shop assistant, teacher, doctor or David Williamson characters can you remember being taken by actors such as those in this production? So it's impossible to imagine something like TV's The Bill (full of non-white Brits) being produced here centring on a local police station staffed by Australians of - say - Vietnamese, indigenous, islander, Lebanese or any of the other 110+ nationalities that call Australia home.
On the other hand, Blue Heelers - with its ethnic mix of Aussies of mainly fish-and-chips descent - could be said to truly represent Australia today, at least in the make up of its police forces. Undoubtedly true, so what has happened to the role of art, and drama in particular, as a social leader? We're in a peculiar place when John Bell has to explain to people why, after 17 years, his Bell Shakespeare Company is only now able to program Othello. (Because in Wayne Blair he feels they have an indigenous actor with the depth of experience and talent to play the Moor, and no, he has never wanted to cast the play without a man of colour in the title role.)
As it is, Anna in the Tropics, with its joy, laughter and ultimate tragedy is made even more poignant and memorable for its honesty and rarity both as a work of drama and in the playing of it. It's a first-rate entertainment that will linger in your heart and mind longer than most.
Anna in the Tropics, Downstairs Belvoir St to May 13; ph: (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au. And don't forget Cheap Tuesdays: "pay what you choose ($10 minimum)"; tickets available one hour before the performance. Thanks to Brett Boardman for his photography.
