Anna in the Tropics – Sunday Rush

A Noise Within (ANW), California’s acclaimed classic repertory theatre company, announces the fifth production of its 30^th anniversary season, Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Anna in the Tropics, directed by ANW’s Director of Cultural Programming Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx (he/him).  The play runs now through April 17, 2022, with a Sunday Rush performance on April 10 at 7:00 p.m. All remaining tickets for the Sunday evening performance are $25. Tickets are available online now for the performance with the code SUNDAYRUSH while selecting seats OR mention “SUNDAY RUSH” after 2 p.m. on the day of the performance at the box office window.

Shimmering with passion and poetry, Anna in the Tropics weaves the tale of a Cuban-American cigar factory in 1929 Florida where cigars are still rolled by hand and “lectors” are employed to transport and inspire the workers as they toil on the factory floor. As a handsome and debonair new lector, Juan Julian, reads the words of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the lives of the workers begin to parallel the novel. Old traditions and new ways collide while longing, love, and betrayal spark a volatile flame that signals the end of an era.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times said: “In evoking the lost Cuban-American world of a Florida cigar factory in 1929, Mr. Cruz has created a work as wistful and affectingly ambitious as its characters. Anna in the Tropics reaches for the artistic heavens.”

Muñoz-Proulx, who joined ANW’s artistic staff in 2018, built ANW’s robust Noise Now program, which is designed to celebrate underrepresented populations, communities of color, young people, and all others not equitably represented in the theatre. Anna in the Tropics marks his first time directing a subscription season show on ANW’s Redmond Stage, and he’s excited to tackle this material, which he finds very relatable in the current moment.

“It depicts a beautiful tension between the old and the new, the past and the future, how these characters have to make a choice to evolve or honor tradition, as their lives play out—all this, not knowing America is on the precipice of the Great Depression,” Muñoz-Proulx said.

In his preface to the play, Cruz said: “Literary reveries are related to cigar smoke—both permit one to escape the weight of the world and defy the laws of gravity. Cigar workers were able to escape the monotony of manual labor through literary reveries… Perhaps these imaginary flights don’t offer immediate solutions to life’s difficulties but to pause over a few lines of a book and share human emotions can bring us sense of consolation and alleviate reality.”

Single ticket prices for Anna in the Tropics start at $25 and are available at anoisewithin.org, by phone at 626-356-3121, and at the box office located at 3352 East Foothill Blvd. in Pasadena, Calif.