Playwright Cruz — a former McCarter artist-in-residence — has set his play in a Cuban-American cigar factory in 1929. The factory employs "lectors" to entertain and educate the factory workers, and a new lector who reads aloud from Anna Karenina becomes "a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics, and the American dream prove a volatile combination."
The cast features Jimmy Smits, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Priscilla Lopez and John Ortiz.
Producers Roger Berlind and Daryl Roth plan to take the play to Broadway later this fall.
