Walking into the Aurora Fox Theatre is like walking off East Colfax and back in time to Tampa’s Cuban district in 1929.
Brian Mallgrave’s evocative set whisks you right inside the cigar-rolling factory where poor Cuban laborers pass their mundane days with the help of a lector who regales and educates these largely illiterate workers with the greatest masterpieces in literature.
This is Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer-winning “Anna in the Tropics,” where the new lector is handsome Juan Julian (Tyee Tilghman). He’s bearing an escape clause in the form of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” a story dismissed by some scholars as a trashy doomed romance but cited by others as the greatest novel ever written.
Julian ignites varying passions (from men and women) as Cruz’s sensual story plays out in somewhat parallel form.
“Anna in the Tropics” is a major accomplishment for the rising Aurora Fox and director Melissa Lucero McCarl. There’s a loveliness that permeates every aspect of this staging. Nicole Harrison’s tasteful costuming, Robert Byers’ lighting and El Armstrong’s sound work fluidly to create a sweltering, sensual mood where one might easily give in to the dangerous escapism of forbidden romance.
It’s a perfect play for Denver audiences, where Latinos are the majority minority, and there is an abundance of underutilized actors of color.
Here that ensemble includes some of Denver’s most respected actors of any hue – Gabriella Cavallero, Jude Moran, Tilghman. It includes Su Teatro stalwart Manuel Roybal and emerging newcomers like Chelley Canales and Concetta Troskie. Canales arcs from an adorable sprite to the victim of a brutal societal lesson. Troskie plays Conchita, a married woman who finally learns to ask what she wants from a man by emulating Anna, despite the inevitable cost. When you stir something deep in someone’s soul, it almost always comes with grave consequences.
Cumulatively, though, the acting is competent but not commanding, and that keeps this compelling evening from reaching true transcendence. There’s more going on here than sex. There are universal issues of poverty, modernization clashing with tradition, gender power, generational conflict and the end of a way of life. That’s a lot to pull off.
One of my great moments as theater critic was at the 2003 Humana Festival in Louisville, Ky. I was sitting on a couch next to a stranger, when he took the call informing him he had won the Pulitzer for “Anna.” Poor kid had no one to celebrate the news with but me.
It was a surprise choice in a year when “Take Me Out” and “The Goat” were both nominated. But while both were better plays, each was hampered by an inescapable flaw that allowed “Anna” to slip through.
“Anna” is a promising play, rich in language. But is it Pulitzer-worthy? Critics and audiences have argued its merits ever since. “Anna” is certainly original for Cruz’s inspired choice of time, place and themes. But even though the source story is itself a central character, this is, in effect, a creative adaptation.
It’s fun to chart which characters identify with or emulate their “Karenina” counterparts. But the affair does play out like a rather thin romance novel, especially when compared with the sweeping source. The ending is not a foregone conclusion, but neither is it surprising, nor as moving as it should be.
Still, the Aurora Fox has set the bar high for a promising 23rd season.
“Anna in the Tropics” ***
DRAMA|Aurora Fox, 9900 E. Colfax Ave.|Written by Nilo Cruz|Directed by Melissa Lucero McCarl|Featuring Tyee Tilghman, Concetta Troskie, Gabriella Cavallero and Chelley Canales|THROUGH OCT. 7|7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 10 minutes|$20-$24|303-739-1970 or
3 more
“ELEEMOSYNARY” An elegant and melancholy character study of three generations of women (Annawyn Shamas, real-life daughter Ellen Shamas-Wright and Tessa Nelson). You have to love a night of theater that breaks your heart and builds your vocabulary at the same time. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 14 at the Playwright Theatre, 2119 E. 17th Ave. $20 (303-499-0383 or
).
“NUNSENSE A-MEN” So I only just now finally got the pun. Nuns – only they’re men. Amen! Hilarity? We’ll see. This must be the 47th wretched rip-off of the “Nunsense” franchise. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 21 at Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 West Main St., Littleton. $18-$34 (303-794-2787 or
).
“THE HOSTAGE” Upstart Crow has blended three versions of IRA veteran Brendan Behar’s 1960 play about an innocent British soldier facing execution at the hands of said IRA. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Dairy Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. $16-$20 (303-444-7328, ).
–John Moore
Weekly podcast
“RUNNING LINES” WITH … JOAN AND RICHARD BELL: She’s the director of Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage” for Boulder’s Upstart Crow. He’s the co-founding president and an actor in the play. Together they talk with Denver Post theater critic John Moore about one of our most longstanding and unique of theater companies. listen by
