Critics fall over themselves in an effort to compare Nilo Cruz’s cigar factory drama, “Anna in the Tropics,” to a cigar. But that metaphor fails against the Pulitzer Prize-winning play’s shortcomings, as evident in Arizona Theatre Company’s bold but revealing Southwest premier production. What cigar-like robustness exists in “Anna” is a deftly constructed facade, the result of pasting strips of a rather predictable romantic plot around the inflated aura of a great work of literature: namely Tolstoy’s carefully wrought romantic Venn diagram, “Anna Karenina.”

In the end, “Anna in the Tropics” is less like a fine smoke and more like a creation of papier-mâché.

“Anna’s” plot is the stuff of Mexican soap operas and long-familiar romance novels: A lector, or reader of books, named Juan Julian (played by Al Espinosa) is hired to entertain workers at a family-owned Florida cigar factory in 1929 — shortly before cigar-making machines render the Cuban tradition of the lector obsolete — and when he arrives, his reading of “Anna Karenina” ignites the passions of those around him.

An affair with the married Conchita (played masterfully by Jaqueline Duprey) helps her find new passion with her husband, Palomo; young Marela (cutely acute Adriana Gaviria) finds a new crush; and conniving Cheché (Javi Mulero, a young Raul Julia doppelganger), dreaming of the profits from modernizing the factory and gaining greater share of ownership from his gambling-addicted half-brother, takes the ultimate revenge on the lector, who comes to resemble the brick wall of tradition that stands in his way.

Cruz infuses the story with an endless stream of poetic strains that, while literary in design, test the ear when delivered on stage and ultimately draw audiences away from being able to connect to characters or story.

(It’s telling that “Anna” won its Pulitzer in written, not staged, form.) In the ATC production, director Richard Hamburger and his splendid actors do what they can to translate that often stilted literary tone to more demonstrative performances, often using the play’s least ostentatious statements to push the story along to its predictable and melodramatic end.

The finest performance comes from Tim Perez as Palomo, the husband whose own affair prompts Conchita to have an affair with the lector. With a primal howl and a pained confusion that builds the first act’s climax, Palomo becomes a sort of Cuban Stanley Kowalski, evoking both fear and sympathy. Hamburger gives Perez wide berth to work the stage, and it’s a smart decision. (Less smart is giving no attention to the feud between sisters Conchita and Marela over Juan Julian’s affection.)

The secret to appreciating “Anna in the Tropics” — and almost everything in ATC’s rich, precious production deserves praise — is not getting hung up on that pesky Pulitzer, of realizing that underneath its filigreed poeticism, “Anna” has a semi-hollow core, one with room for both great literature and sublime acting.