Summary
Scene 1
The play opens at a cockfight, where a man named Eliades is taking bets on each match. A man in his late fifties, named Santiago, is in attendance with his half-brother Cheché (Chester). They always bet on opposite gamecocks, and Santiago keeps losing. Meanwhile, Santiago's wife Ofelia—along with their two daughters Marela and Conchita—are waiting at the harbor for a ship to come in. They are there waiting for a man who they say is graceful, handsome, and sure to have a way with words. We soon find out that the man they are waiting for is a new lector (i.e., someone who reads to the workers at a cigar factory while they roll cigars), who comes highly recommended after the death of their former lector and the mysterious loss of his replacement (we find out more about this later).
Back at the cockfight, Santiago is losing more and more money. He asks Cheché to excuse him and let him go get more money from home, but when Cheché insists Santiago be done with gambling for the night, Santiago instead borrows money from Cheché, carving a promissory note on the sole of his shoe twice to take out more funds. At the harbor, meanwhile, Marela recounts how she has used folk magic—putting their lector's name in a glass of cinnamon, water, and brown sugar—to sweeten the lector's journey to them. Her mother and sister chide her for this, saying that she may have unwittingly cursed him instead. Back at the fight, Santiago's final loan from Cheché uses a larger share in his cigar factory as collateral. When Santiago loses this bet too, Cheché then takes special care not to spoil the promissory notes on his shoe, walking home with one foot totally bare.
Finally, recognizing the gardenia on Ofelia's hat (which she had previously told him to look out for), the new lector, Juan Julian, approaches the women at the harbor. Marela is so nervous with excitement that she wets herself, and everyone notices. There is an awkward pause, and Marela is left dumbstruck, but Juan Julian soon gathers his things, and they make their way home.
Scene 2
Scene 2 opens back at the Alcalars' cigar factory (Alcalar is Ofelia and Santiago's family name). Cheché is wearing one shoe as Juan Julian enters the scene. Cheché asks who Juan Julian is there to see, and when the latter says he is there to see Ofelia, Cheché says they are not hiring lectors and tries to get rid of Juan Julian. Just then, Ofelia and her daughters enter, dismissing Cheché, who then leaves dejectedly. We learn that Juan Julian has already met several of the cigar rollers, each of whom brings with them a distinct heritage or flavor—there is Peppino Mellini, who comes from Italy; Palomo, Conchita's husband; Manola, who keeps a photo of Valentino; and Pascual Torino, who is from Spain. Cheché, on the other hand, is introduced as a clown.
Here, the Alcalar women tell Juan Julian a bit more about Cheché. We learn that he is Santiago's half-brother, having shown up at the factory one day from an unknown place with a birth certificate to corroborate his story. Moreover, when Juan Julian asks about Cheché's dislike for lectors, Marela tells Juan Julian that it is because Cheché's wife, a Southern belle from Atlanta, ran away with their last lector. As a result, Cheché has resigned himself to dislike all lectors and the love stories they often read to the factory workers.
Juan Julian then goes on to say that he plans to read the workers Anna Karenina for his debut at the factory, and when he mentions his reservations that Cheché might not like such a romantic novel, the women tell him not to worry. They then ask Juan Julian's opinion so far of Tampa, and he tells them that it is a massive and expansive place with little shade, a huge sky, and a seeming lack of places to hide. This then leads into a humorous aside about how hard it is to hide behind and from light—for example, the light that comes off of one's skin.
Cheché re-enters, holding the shoe from the cockfight signed by Santiago. Ofelia initially laughs off Santiago's losses and teases Cheché, but when Juan Julian and the girls leave—leaving Ofelia alone with Cheché—he tells her of the deal that Santiago made concerning the factory. Until Cheché is paid back in full for the funds Santiago borrowed, he says he is entitled to an additional share in the factory. This enrages Ofelia, who tells Cheché to leave and take this business elsewhere—she wants no part in it.
Scene 3
The scene opens with Juan Julian reading Anna Karenina to the workers as they roll. Despite the fact that they are working, they are totally engrossed in the story being read to them—specifically, the part of Tolstoy's novel in which the author compares Anna's love with Vronsky to a body that has been deprived of life by a murderer. In this section being read by Juan Julian, Tolstoy discusses the almost compulsive reaction the lovers have to the shame of their love affair, feeling that it is a necessity to shower each other with kisses and love because the price paid for their love has been too great a shame. Just as the murderer must dispose of a body shamefully because it is the price of murder, so too must Anna and her lover love each other with passion to face the steep cost of their own shame.
After Juan Julian finishes reading this section, the workers discuss what they have just heard. Cheché voices his dislike for love stories, lectors, and the idle chatter of the women that such stories inspire, but Palomo says that he likes to hear love stories. The women agree with him, and Ofelia in particular mentions that the lector tradition is integral to the process of authentically producing Cuban cigars. While cigar factory workers might not be literate, Ofelia says, they at the very least can quote lines from the great works of world literature with a lector's instruction. The women also mention that Anna Karenina was an apt choice on Juan Julian's part, since reading it in the height of summer gives them hopes and fantasies of escaping to a Russian winter.
Palomo and Cheché leave the room, and the women discuss the novel among themselves. Marela thinks that Anna must truly be enraptured by the passions of her affair, but Conchita offers Marela a reality check, informing her that taking on a lover is agony for Anna, something confusing and inevitable that reinforces itself more strongly each day by the compulsions of shame—as was discussed in the section of the novel Juan Julian just read. As Conchita talks, it is clear that she "refers to the story, but also to [experiences from] her own life" (29). Marela, for her part, does not seem to understand what Conchita, and later her mother, are telling her: rather, she is caught up in the passions and romantic fantasies of the novel, letting her mind take her to a place as wide and high as the sky. Ofelia then reminds Marela that people like them cannot afford to dream so much, and that they always must keep their thoughts grounded in reality. As the workday ends, Ofelia and Marela then exit, leaving Conchita and her husband Palomo (who re-enters the room) alone to work overtime together.
Conchita and Palomo first speak about Santiago's financial troubles, then move on to the topic of the novel being read to them. Palomo says that he likes the novel, but Conchita wonders if the part about the love affair makes him uncomfortable. Palomo only says that he wishes that he and Conchita had all the money of the characters in the novel, so that they might realize their dreams of opening their own business. Conchita lambasts her husband for not being able to have any kind of fantasy removed from the realm of the everyday, and she reminds him of how romantic he first was when they were courting. Palomo, however, does not seem to recall this romantic phase of his life, so Conchita cuts straight to the point. She tells Palomo that she appreciates the novel because she totally understands the husband's emotions, and she has learned from his response to Anna's affair (even though she is of totally different circumstances than the novel's characters) to see things in her own life through a different lens. This is because, Conchita reveals, Palomo is having an affair.
Conchita tells Palomo that she wants to discuss Palomo's affair openly with him, so that she can learn more about why his lover makes Palomo so happy. She wants to love Palomo better, but he will not indulge her and let her in. In response, Conchita asks what Palomo wants to happen to their relationship. He suggests that they get a divorce, but Conchita suggests instead that she take on her own lover, change the way she dresses, and cut her hair. As the play ends, the two continue in their disagreement, but Conchita is trying to reconcile their love, suggesting that they each be more open with each other and give each other chances to be happy.
Scene 4
Scene 4 opens on an interior scene in Santiago and Ofelia's home. They are engaged in an explosive argument over Santiago's gambling habits, and they use Marela as a mediator so that they can communicate, with each telling Marela what to say to the other. They mock each other and threaten to pawn their wedding rings, and this exchange eventually causes Marela to leave in frustration. Once alone, they start to talk to each other (without meeting eyes) about Anna Karenina. Ofelia mentions that Levin is very dedicated to his farm, and this reminds Santiago of the way he used to be devoted to his own business. Santiago then admits to Ofelia that he shouldn't drink as much, and that he shouldn't be as careless with their money. Nonetheless, he resolves to return to the factory only when he has the money to face Cheché. Ofelia thinks this absurd and starts to leave, but Santiago asks her to stay and tell him more about the book.
This animates Ofelia immediately. She sits down and begins to tell Santiago about Anna Karenina—specifically, about the relationships of Levin, Kitty, Vronsky, Anna, and her husband. While Levin loves Kitty, Kitty loves Vronsky, who is having an affair with the married Anna. For his part, however, Santiago is only able to focus on Levin's love for Kitty, which reminds him of his own love for Ofelia. He tells Ofelia how much he loves her, and that he hopes he has not lost her through his stupidity and errors. Ofelia only responds by saying that, if Santiago had truly lost her, she would not be by his side still. They embrace, and the scene closes.
Scene 5
The final scene of Act 1 opens at the factory, with Juan Julian, Marela, and Conchita talking about nature. Juan Julian says that he always wishes to be amongst nature, and that he feels suffocated in the city, which he sees as a kind of crocodile's mouth (where the buildings resemble the crocodile's teeth). Conchita agrees with him, and they move on to discuss Tolstoy. Juan Julian says he chose to read Anna Karenina first because Tolstoy understood humanity better than anyone. Marela excuses herself, and Juan Julian is left alone with Conchita.
When alone, Conchita asks Juan Julian how he became a lector, and he tells her that he learned to love books and listen to other readers while locked up in his house one summer, trying to avoid a creditor. He says that he dreams of going to New England and traveling north, and when Conchita reminds Juan Julian that this is where Cheché is from, Juan Julian says Cheché is from a world of his own. They then talk about New England, and Conchita says she once knew someone from New London. It was an exceptionally modest boy, and Conchita tells Juan Julian that when she offered him her hair for the feast of Saint Candelaria, when men choose a tree to bury their women's hair under as a sacrifice to the earth, he was embarrassed. Ever since, Conchita says, her father has honored her by burying her hair under the earth each year.
At this news, Juan Julian questions why Palomo does not want this honor for himself, and Conchita tells him only that she is currently cutting her hair like Clara Bow, and that Juan Julian can bury her hair if he wishes to. He offers instead to press her hair in the pages of Anna Karenina, so that the stories in her hair will not be lost to the earth, and Conchita picks a page at random to have her hair pressed in. The page she picks contains a passage about the truth of love showing through any superficial emotion. Juan Julian begins to comb Conchita's hair for cutting while her back is turned, but he kisses her on the shoulder. After this, Conchita turns around to return his kiss, and the scene ends.
Analysis
The first act of Anna in the Tropics sees rapid intensification and change in the relationships of many of its main characters. Santiago and Ofelia, for example, have a significant marital dispute after the former gambles away all of their money on a cockfight. Moreover, Juan Julian and Conchita begin an affair after Palomo's infidelity and aloofness leave her wanting and starved for a new kind of affection. Finally, Palomo and Conchita themselves are forced to reckon with their decaying marriage after Conchita learns new techniques for coping and living from Anna Karenina. In sum, this first act seems to cast numerous rifts between characters in order to lyrically and precisely examine the ways in which human beings love and live. On a deeper level, however, one should not lose track of the fact that, in doing so, Nilo Cruz is also making a series of interconnected points about various binaries, as well as how these dualities shift over time. The play's focus on binaries is so profound as to be evident even from the staging of the first scene, in which we alternate rapidly between the masculine, unrestrained scene of the cockfight and the more domestic, feminine space of the lector's reception at the harbor.
The first and most significant binary brought into focus in the first act is that of tradition and modernity. Of course, we know from Cruz's own testimony to the process of writing the play that he chose this specific moment (1929) precisely because it was the moment in which the lector tradition died out, yielding to a more mechanical and industrial modernity. At the same time, however, the play itself gives us many clues that this dichotomy is to be a central focus of the work. Consider, for example, the discussion in the first scene regarding Marela's "sweetening" of the lector's name and, by extension, his arrival. This folk ritual disturbs Conchita and Ofelia, who suggest that Marela should not rely on such old-world methods to bring about good fortune for her future lector. In addition, consider the fact that Cheché advocates against the lector tradition, submitting that it is an old and outdated one that is unnecessary to producing cigars. Later in the second act, we will see this gesture reach a head when Cheché actually brings machinery into the factory, but here we recognize its earliest kernels. Third, consider the discussion between Juan Julian and the Alcalar sisters regarding the influence of nature on his spirit. In a more atavistic state, among nature, he feels more at ease with himself and the world, but when entrapped by the demands of a modern society, he feels almost suffocated. Finally, consider the details of Conchita's final conversation with Juan Julian: in deciding to become a more independent woman and alter her appearance, she uses touchstones of 20th-century modernity as referents—she, after all, wants to look like Clara Bow.
The play's emphasis on the divide between old and new lifestyles carries over into many smaller binaries, each of which also warrants examination. Chief among these is the divide between the genders and their respective roles in the home and workplace. Ofelia, for example, takes on the more masculine role of managing her irresponsible husband's affairs and hiring a lector. On the opposite hand, however, we have Conchita, who is disempowered from taking on a lover of her own by her masculine and stubborn husband Palomo. We are also made keenly aware of the difference between the genders in how each responds to the romantic literature of Tolstoy. While most of the women are moved to fantasy by the novel, imagining themselves in a winter fantasy free of the constraints of Florida life, Palomo and Cheché are annoyed by the novel for personal reasons and resist its hypnotic spell. Thus, while a great deal of the play is meant to remind us of how free many of the women act and hope to be, there is also the constant reminder of patriarchal and masculine superstructures that keep them chained down (more of this comes in Act 2, as well).
Another binary at the fore in Act 1 is defined by the boundary between Northern life and Southern life. Cheché, the voice of industrial modernity in the play, is from the North, while the other, more romantic and traditional figures in the play, are from Cuba in the South. This is a sharply defined showing of how immigrants may resist assimilation and hold on to their local traditions and cultures for longer than those who are of the muddled U.S. stock (Cheché is, after all, Santiago's half-brother, of relatively unknown ethnic and class mixture). At the same time, however, note that the divide between North and South is not always so quick to paint the Northern lifestyle in a negative light: after all, Conchita and Juan Julian admit a shared yearning to go north in Scene 5. Moreover, the fact that Anna Karenina itself is set in a frigid, northern environment endears it to many of the play's characters like Marela and Ofelia. They yearn to have something different from the hot and languid summers of Florida, and Russia offers a romantic respite. Thus, for better or for worse, Cruz cues us in Act 1 to start to notice the divide between Northern and Southern life.
Finally, each of these binaries calls our attention to a larger binary that is being set up in the play—that is, the correspondence between the "real" world of Ybor City and the "literary" world of Anna Karenina. There are a number of uncanny correspondences between the two worlds—there are in each, after all, an affair and a love triangle, a consideration of modern womanhood, and a tragic ending (more on this in Act 2). At the same time, however, we are also meant to understand and dissect the numerous elements which divide the two worlds—geography, history, class, culture, and so on. The people of Tolstoy's novel and Cruz's play could not be from any more different backgrounds, and yet Tolstoy's novel still speaks to Cruz's cast. What we are left with, then, is a haunting testament to the power of literature, as well as an understanding of those themes and dynamics so integral to the human condition so as to become universal (e.g., love, betrayal, pain, and so on). In sum, then, Cruz is not just authoring his own play about these dynamics and showing them at work, but rather articulating them in a dialogue with Tolstoy's earlier work, connecting dots across space and time to reveal a more intimate, human truth about the nature of our lives.
