The work of Cuban playwright Cruz is much in demand throughout the U.S., with his other plays Lorca in a Green Dress and Beauty of the Father having had multiple productions there. Anna snatched the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a 2004 Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Set in 1929 Florida, Anna depicts a reader, or “lector,” who is employed to read to the employees of a cigar factory. But the choice of book — Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” — has explosive consequences.

In New York the cast featured Jimmy Smits and Priscilla Lopez. The Hampstead production will star Diana Quick and Joseph Mydell and will be directed by Indhu Rubasingham. Quick, a winner of Emmy and BAFTA awards, was last seen on the London stage in the Shared Experience production of After Mrs. Rochester, which played the Lyric Hammersmith and the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End. Mydell has an Olivier Award to his resume (for Perestroika, part two of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the National Theatre) as well as numerous credits with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Anna in the Tropics will run at the Hampstead until Jan. 8, 2005. For more information, call (0)207 722 9301.