Pulitzer Prize winner opening SCR season

Tom Titus

The production of plays that have won the Pulitzer Prize is hardly

unusual at South Coast Repertory. The Pulitzer winners that have

graced the SCR stage numbers 16 in all -- including “Death of a

Salesman,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “That Championship Season,”

“You Can’t Take It with You” and even a musical, “Sunday in the Park

with George.”

What hasn’t been accomplished by SCR, or any other local theater

group for that matter, is the staging of a Pulitzer Prize-winning

play almost immediately after the award was announced. This will be

accomplished by the Costa Mesa company this weekend.

Actually, SCR had penciled the Nilo Cruz play “Anna in the

Tropics” into the initial slot of its Julianne Argyros Stage season

before the honor was accorded. Cruz had attracted the attention of

company artistic directors David Emmes and Martin Benson four years

ago when his play “Two Sisters and a Piano” was presented on what

then was the theater’s Second Stage.

The play is set in a Florida cigar factory during the Depression,

where the last of the Cuban cigar makers try to bring a little humor

and love of life into their workplace, trying to create a little city

like the one they left behind.

To lighten their burden, and provide a bit of education in the

process, comes a man known as the “lector,” who reads aloud in the

tradition of the time. His chosen book is Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,”

and the emotions it unleashes change the destinies of those who hear

it.

Director Juliette Carrillo shares the Cuban-born playwright’s

emotional sensibility. The pair have collaborated on several

occasions with developmental readings, but this will be their first

full production together.

“Stylistically and aesthetically, I feel we are a good match,”

Carrillo declares. “We are attracted and influenced by the same

writers and have a similar emotional sensibility and lyricism to our

work.”

In “Anna in the Tropics,” the presence of renowned literature in

such a near-impoverished setting changes the lives of the characters

who hear it, and Carrillo hopes her production will have the same

effect on SCR’s audiences.

“One of my favorite lines in the play is ‘Literature brings out

the best and the worst part of ourselves,’” she said. “‘If you are

angry, it brings out your anger. If you are sad, it brings out your

sadness.’ My wish is to have this play -- and specifically this

production -- do the same.

“I want our audiences to see a reflection of their inner lives up

on the stage, and leave with, if nothing else, a glimpse into their

own humanity,” she said.

Cruz was born in Cuba and lives in New York. He teaches

playwriting at Yale University. “Anna in the Tropics” also received

the American Theater Critics Assn. Steinberg Award.

South Coast Repertory’s production will the be West Coast premiere

of this honored play. The show will play nightly, except Mondays,

through Oct. 25.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.