Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics” hadn’t opened in New York when it earned its Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Bathing in buzz, the show opened there to audiences and critics who left curious, surprised and more than a little underwhelmed by what they saw.

Called alternately “too slight” and “too overblown” by some critics, “Anna” was both praised and panned for its effusive poeticism — putting flowery words into the mouths of simple, hardworking Cuban immigrants who spend days toiling in a family cigar factory in Ybor City, Fla., in the late 1920s and whose passions are awakened by a new lector who reads literature — specifically Tolstoy’s epic romantic tangle, “Anna Karenina.”

Arizona Theatre Company is issuing a corrective of sorts with its production of “Anna,” which ran last week in Tucson and opens in the Valley this weekend.

In this production, which is being shared with the Dallas Theater Center, the drab setting and the fan slowly rotating from the ceiling are gone, replaced by a vibrant, “Dante’s humidor” of a set (designed by Chris Barreca) and director Richard Hamburger’s desire to see actors approach their lofty dialogue with the speed and efficiency of Shakespeare.

Their words — like their characters’ swirling passions, equal parts desire and despair — are offered up to the tobacco leaves drying on the ceiling, where they mix and come down with a ruddy, lyrical density.

It makes for what actress Jaqueline Duprey says is a bolder, more dynamic “Anna.”

She should know. Duprey understudied in the New York production, which she says “was a lot more played-down.”

“It was hard,” she adds, “for me to get into the story.”

It’s a tale that follows conventions of classic romantic literature: When the new lecturer (played by Al Espinosa) begins “Anna Karenina,” he ignites new passions in Conchita (Duprey), a young woman married to the adulterous Palomo (Tim Perez) while rekindling the love between factory-owning husband and wife Santiago (Apollo Dukakis) and Ofelia (Karmin Murcelo) and kicking up the ire of Cheche (Javi Mulero), a cold character who wants nothing more than to take over the cigar factory and automate the cigar-making process to stay competitive and more modern.

In the end, emotions — rational, irrational and damnable — bubble to the surface and pop.

“It’s just so full of passion,” Espinosa says. “I want people who see this to leave reminded of the passion they’ve had in their lives — to experience it again.”