Thu 8/8-Sat 9/7
Much as Nilo Cruz’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics used the Russian novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy as the template for its story set among Cuban cigar factory workers in Tampa, Florida, so John Rivera-Resto’s Trópico Macbeth: El Ascenso alPoder (The Rise to Power) takes Shakespeare’s classic tragedy as its source material, following the original plot but resetting it on a tropical island somewhere in the Caribbean in 1935, as two warring families jockey for power and ambition drives strong women who use their men to achieve their goals. You know that no good will come of this!
A 40-minute excerpt from Trópico Macbeth was performed at the recent BorderLight Festival at Playhouse Square, and now the full play will have its world premiere at LatinUs’s theater at the Pivot Center. The production sounds spectacular as they describe it: “This exotic, exciting, and ever-changing world of ruthless politics and rumba will be brought to life by actors representing more than ten Latin American countries and a supporting cast numbering in the hundreds. Trópico Macbeth is a live cinema-style theater, an epic, bilingual presentation not to be missed. [It] will be a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle event.”
And it will be followed in October with Trópico Macbeth: El Descenso a la Locura (The Descent into Madness).
Author Rivera-Resto, who comes from a Puerto Rican background, is a Cleveland-based writer/visual artist who is a performer, technical director and designer with LatinUs Theatre.
The play is mostly in Spanish (with audio translations), with American characters who speak English. It opens Friday August 8 and runs through Saturday September 7. Get tickets here.
2937 W 25th St, Cleveland, OH 44113
2937 W 25th St, Cleveland, OH 44113