Theater: Bernard B. Jacobs / 242 West 45th Street, New York, NY, 10036
With Anna in the Tropics, Cuban-born Nilo Cruz became the first Hispanic playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play is set in a 1929 Cuban-American cigar factory where cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is cause for celebration, but when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, 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. Jimmy Smits stars as the lector.
November 17, 2003: That slowly rotating ceiling fan isn't the only thing stirring the air in Nilo Cruz's ''Anna in the Tropics,'' the earnestly poetic play that won this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama and is only now making its New York debut.
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