By Kevin Hylton
November 18, 2003
Riding Through The Tropics: A Review of Nilo Cruz’s play ANNA IN THE TROPICS and Paula Vogel’s THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME
By Kevin Hylton
This may be the most schizophrenic theatre column in existence. Not only do I find myself splitting my columns between reviews and interviews and but also I rarely choose to spell theater the same way in two consecutive sentences. Unlike this column, New York’s Broadway is really one-dimensional these days. Almost every play coming out this season is going to be a revival. And even the non-revivals are reviving old casts with Matt Broderick and Nathan Lane returning for a couple of months in hopes of bolstering THE PRODUCERS’ box office sales. However, there are two new plays in New York that will demand some attention. The first one is ANNA IN THE TROPICS and its playwright, Nilo Cruz, won the Pulitzer this year for the piece. The second is THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME written by past Pulitzer winner, Paula Vogel. I think both of these plays are worth seeing. I do, however, feel that the darker horse may merit more attention.
New York’s Theater Critics were a little shocked this year when the relatively unknown playwright, Nilo Cruz beat out Richard Greenberg and Edward Albee for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. At the time it was nominated Cruz’s play, ANNA IN THE TROPICS (ANNA), had not played anywhere near New York City, much less a Broadway stage. As a result, there has been much hype surrounding the production by Roger Berlind and Daryl Roth that just opened at the Royale Theater.
ANNA IN THE TROPICS tells the story of a Cuban family living in Tampa, Florida in 1929 in Yabor City. The family runs a cigar company and rolls tobacco by hand using the methods taught to them in “the old country.” Apparently, during the '20s, and in earlier years in Cuba, it was common for the cigar factories to employ a lector (or reader) to read novels to the workers as they rolled their cigars. It seems that many of these workers were either unable to read or simply enjoyed having another read to them to pass the time as they worked. ANNA begins with the arrival of a new lector. The play predominately looks at the ways in which the lector and the novel he reads aloud (Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA) impacted the family business and the people working in the cigar plant.
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Nilo Cruz is likely our country’s most produced American-Cuban playwright. His work enjoyed productions at many reputable theaters including the McCarter Theater, New York Public Theater, and New York Theatre Workshop. It is clear from his past accomplishments and from the script of ANNA IN THE TROPICS that Mr. Cruz is a seasoned and talented playwright. In fact, the entire production of ANNA is quite sound. Cruz enlisted Emily Mann to direct the new play. Mann has been the artistic director of the McCarter Theater since 1990 and has worked on many lauded productions with a slew of renowned performers. Overall, Mann’s direction of ANNA is successful. The characters are vividly brought to life by the talented cast and the audience is clearly taken into this cigar rolling plant in 1929. Perhaps the biggest flaw in Mann’s direction is her choreography of the characters on stage. Sometimes it is a bit over the top. On occasion the director forces metaphors rather than using more understated techniques to display the subtleties of this well layered script. Still, the rather sparse set designed by Robert Brill (who is working currently on the new Sondheim project ASSASINS) creates a realistic venue for the events to transpire on stage. In many ways the set itself, constructed out of weathered wood, resembles a cigar box and gives the actors an open setting for the play to unfold
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The cast of ANNA is like a carefully arranged bouquet of flowers. Some of the characters fall into the background like simple greenery such as Palomo (played by John Ortiz) the husband of Conchita (Daphne Rubin Vega). Others immediately appear vibrant and colorful like the cigar plant owner Santiago (portrayed by Victor Argo). The beauty of this cast, and the play itself, is the way in
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which the subtlest characters who seem, at first to be just simple greenery, suddenly jump out front to reveal different shades of green. Their greens, when exposed, combine to show new, complex patterns and designs. Similar to real life, many of these background characters prove to be more interesting than lively ones to whom we initially gravitate towards. Jimmy Smits is the biggest marquis name on the bill. It seems that the nights the actor spent on stage acting in the 2002 Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park production of TWELFTH NIGHT was time well spent. The actor appears very comfortable on stage and gives a very even performance as the lector, Juan Julian, even throughout the entire show. Smits’ white suited lector displays a range of human emotions from kindness to passion, jealousy, and anger. In many senses he is the glue that holds the play together.
With all of this said, the greatest compliments should be paid to Mr. Cruz himself. His play succeeds on several levels. The characters he creates feel like real people and never appear one-dimensional. This play is a character piece with a rather simple plot line and yet Cruz is able to maintain interest in the characters throughout the entire play. For me the play’s biggest weakness and yet its greatest strength lie in the language Cruz emits from the mouths of his characters. At times several of the characters, who are seemingly rather uneducated factory workers, use the vocabulary that you would expect of a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. If you can suspend disbelief and enjoy the language then this is not a problem. If realism is what you crave than some of the language may feel a bit inconsistent. At the same time, Cruz’s play resonates because of the language he employs. Specifically, some of the images he creates are so painful that they will remain in your mind for days. ANNA IN THE TROPICS is the work of a poet no doubt. If you enjoy musing over imagery you will enjoy this play. If you are looking for twists and turns you may want to look on another street.
Paula Vogel’s new play, THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME (CHRISTMAS RIDE), at the Vineyard Theatre is a completely different animal. Vogel, who teaches playwriting at Brown University, gained notoriety when her play HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE (HOW I LEARNED) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. CHRISTMAS RIDE is the first New York production of a play by Vogel since her success in 1998. Since then she’s spent her time teaching in Rhode Island and working on a new arsenal of plays. New York’s Signature Theatre just announced that Vogel would be their playwright in residence for next year. For those of you unfamiliar with the Signature you may wish to look into the theatre. It is one of the only theatres in New York that annually dedicates itself to a yearlong examination of a single playwright’s work. Bill Irwin is currently playwright in residence and past writers include Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Edward Albee, Horton Foote, Lee Blessing, and Arthur Miller, amongst others.
Many people asked what happened to Vogel in the five years since her last production. According to a recent interview with PLAYBILL, the playwright spent the time teaching and working on a screenplay of HOW I LEARNED for HBO. Despite all of these activities Vogel succeeded in putting together an outstanding script. CHRISTMAS RIDE may feel familiar to the fans of HOW I LEARNED but the plays are very different. In CHRISTMAS RIDE, Vogel returns to a familiar place, the family car, for the vast majority of the play’s scenes. The play tells the story of a family driving home from a Christmas Eve dinner and the impact that one ride had on each of the family members. Presumably, the title of this play references Thorton Wilder’s play THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER. There are elements to the CHRISTMAS RIDE that are reminiscent of some of Wilder’s best works. Vogel uses a narrator, much in a similar way to Wilder’s use of the narrator in OUR TOWN, to guide the audience through the story. Indeed, in her interview with PLAYBILL, the playwright commented on her great respect for Wilder and his work and that she hoped people would see this as a remembrance of his art.
One of the most striking aspects of this play is Vogel’s choice to use Japanese Bunraku-style puppets throughout the story. CHRISTMAS RIDE tells the tale of a middle aged married couple and their three children. Puppets play the children when they are shown at young ages. As the play progresses the puppeteers, who manipulated these child puppets, become the children at later, adult periods in their lives. Basil Twist designed the exquisite puppets for Vogel’s play. Twist is the director of The Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE Arts Center and the artist has been nominated for several Drama Desk Awards and won an OBIE Award.
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At first it might appear strange to shift a character back and forth from a puppet to a human actor. However, in this play the transitions work well. Basil’s puppets’ appearances so closely resemble the puppeteer/actors that you can easily look at either the actor or the puppet as the character and let the story unfold around you without any confusion or internal debate.
The actors who play the children all offer outstanding performances. Will McCormack, who portrays Stephen, the young boy who is the central character in the play, offers the most striking work in this piece. McCormack plays Vogel’s character as a tender man who is constantly searching for love and some sort of inner peace after a childhood full of anger and resentment. Throughout the play McCormack presents the man as a kind soul who acts as a guardian angel for his entire family, particularly his two sisters Rebecca and Claire. Some of the most moving moments in the play occur when McCormack merely stands on stage with Catherine Kellner (Rebecca) or Enid Graham (Claire). The parents are played by Randy Graff, who was nominated for multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desks and Mark Blum who recently came off a run at Lincoln Center in DINNER AT EIGHT and the Music Box in FORTUNE’S FOOL. The pair play the arguing parents (referred to as Narrator/Man and Narrator/Woman in the program) beautifully. Their work breathes tragic life displaying the roots of a war torn family.
For CHRISTMAS RIDE, Vogel re-teamed with her long time friend Mark Brokaw. Brokaw directed the outstanding Playwright’s Horizons production of Kenneth Lonergan’s LOBBY HERO and helming the Pulitzer winning production of HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE. Brokaw’s direction is inspired. His work with the cast creates a piece that successfully integrates multiple theatrical styles into a fluid production that examines the human condition with all of its scars and warts. The integration of the puppets, lighting, sound design, and set use minimalism all the while creating a very naturalistic feeling piece that breathes and lives.
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Overall, the show does not feel one minute too long. This sentence should not be taken lightly. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for a playwright is to create a piece that does not have one extra word in it. Each vowel must go towards the ultimate expression the playwright wishes to convey. Vogel has done this. Her language is schizophrenic at times. I do not mean to suggest that her characters are inconsistent. Vogel’s power as a playwright is exposed fully in THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME through her ability to seduce the audience into the story and then when it is engrossed, soaking up the characters happily, stab it out of nowhere with the most painful, poignant, sharp lines one could find in style heaven. Broadway producers take note. Perhaps there is something to be said for schizophrenia. Perhaps the ying requires the yang.
Tickets to ANNA IN THE TROPICS can be purchased through Tele-charge at (212) 239-6200 or online through www.telecharge.com. Tickets range from $46.25 to $81.25. Tickets for THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME can be obtained through the Vineyard Theater box office at (212) 353-0303. Tickets are all $50 (although student rush seats are available for $20).
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