The Stage

Anna in the Tropics

Published Monday 6 December 2004 at 18:10 by Peter Hepple

In many ways the second production with which SCAMP is involved is not likely to be more successful than its first, Fuddy Meers. However, it does score in one respect, as the period and the setting are fascinating and of historical interest.

The action takes place in a small cigar factory in 1929 Florida, in which the workforce are all immigrants from Cuba and Spain. The industry is on the point of mechanisation and the most significant character is a lector, an employee of whom few of us have heard but who was in fact a hired reader whose task it was to inform the workers of the news, relaying it from a newspaper but also, later in the day, switching his attention to novels, usually of the popular and often lurid type.

On this occasion, however, the new lector has chosen the passionate prose of Anna Karenina, which has a potent effect upon his listeners in this small family business, leading to an unanticipated tragedy which overshadows the owner’s idea of fighting the mechanisation threat by creating a quality product.

In fact, it eventually ends in the lector’s murder at the hands of the step-uncle who has cast lascivious eyes on his niece, which is likely to lead to the disintegration of the company. This melodramatic conclusion, inspired by Tolstoy’s novel, is at some odds with the general tenor of the play, which is really a slice of hitherto unknown industrial history.

Though it is well directed by Indra Rubasingham, with a fascinating setting by Liz Ascroft, the dialogue is stiff and the acting occasionally uncertain for an essentially American play with a message to unfold. Even Diana Quick seems ill at ease as the owner’s wife and Enzo Cilenti, as the lector, is not a very convincing fuse for such an explosive finale.

Rachael Stirling is rather more sparky as the daughter of the house, Lorraine Burroughs is genuinely moving as the ultimate victim and there are two strong performances by Joseph Mydell and Peter Polycarpou, though the latter’s role takes a good bit of believing.