Barrington Stage Company has announced the casts for its summer productions of Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics, and the world premiere of May Treuhaft-Ali's ABCD. Anna in the Tropics will take to the Boyd-Quinson Stage July 16-30, followed by ABCD on the St. Germain Stage July 1-23.
Starring in Cruz's Anna in the Tropics will be Broadway veterans Blanca Camacho (In the Heights) as Ofelia, Tony winner Wilson Jermaine Heredia (Rent) as Paloma/Eliades, and Marina Pires (On Your Feet!) as Conchita. They will be joined by Alexis Cruz (Drag Me To Hell) as Cheché, Gilbert Cruz (Boca) as Santiago, Alex Rodriguez as Juan Julian, and Gabriela Saker as Marela.
Set in 1929 at a Cuban cigar factory in Tampa, Florida, an attractive lector reads Anna Karenina to workers as they hand-roll cigars. The lives of the characters and the listeners begin to mirror each other as passion, jealousy, and betrayal collide in this play from Cruz, a Cuban American playwright and the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Elena Araoz (Havana Music Hall, The Manic Monologues) will direct.
Broadway alum Melvin Abston (Sister Act) joins the cast of ABCD as Ellis, joined by Off-Broadway veterans Justin Ahdoot (Sleep No More) as Bilal, Maribel Martinez (Julius Caesar) as Mika Ramos, and Chavez Ravine (Cullud Wattah) as Joanna Krueger. Also in the cast are Juri Henley-Cohn (Bashir Lazhar) as Ibrahim, Torée Alexandre as Tamara Gardner, Pearl Shin as Sunghee, and Brandon St. Clair as Davon Lawrence.
Daniel J. Bryant will direct Treuhaft-Ali's new play about inequity in the American public school system. ABCD follows students and teachers who face choices between their integrity and their success at two vastly different public schools in the same city: one, an underserved school on the brink of being shutdown, and the other an elite magnet program.
This season at Barrington Stage Company also includes the currently running Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Fats Waller Musical Show by Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr. with arrangements and orchestrations by Luther Henderson, and the world premiere of Brent Askari's Andy Warhol in Iran; the world premiere staging of the new Youth Theatre musical The Supadupa Kid (July 29-August 13); Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music (August 6-28); a revival of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (August 19-September 4); and the world premiere of Laura Winters' new play All of Me (September 21-October 9).
For tickets and more information, visit BarringtonStageCo.org.
