Cuba Libre

Anna In The Tropics, Royale Theatre More stars on B'way: Jimmy Smits appears as a reader to a factory of immigrant cigar rollers in Tampa of the early '30s. There, he reads to them the tragic love story of Anna Karenina. Inevitably, that love story finds parallels in the listeners' lives.... The factory is called "Flor del Ciel", flower of the sky. But while the language is florid and expressive -- everyone in the play appears to have mastered metaphor as a linguistic paradigm -- the characters and plot do not match the breadth of the vocabulary they employ. It's easy to see why the Pulitzer jury picked this as their winner this year based solely on their own reading. This production however, moved to New York from Princeton's McCarter Theatre, lacks the powerful, smoldering even, performances needed to carry the play. (Meanwhile -- it's ironic that the Royale Theatre is apparently one of the only places in New York City where you can light up a cigar indoors for a smoke. As the actors explain in langorous detail the pleasures of a good cigar, I kept waiting for Mayor Bloomberg to close the play for public health reasons.)