The struggle between traditional and modern forms the conflict of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Anna in the Tropics,” which opened Thursday at University Theatre at Kansas University.

In 1929, Cuban immigrants Santiago and Ofelia have a cigar factory in the small Florida community of Ybor City. There, they teach their two daughters, Conchita and Marela, the traditional methods of rolling cigars by hand. As they roll cigars, the lector reads to them, filling the factory with literature that imaginatively transports them to other worlds.

As Juan Julian reads to them from “Anna Karenina,” the passions of the characters, their loves and desires begin to affect the people in the factory. Romantic, free-spirited Marela imagines herself as Anna, lost in the cold foreignness of the Russian countryside, while Conchita, unhappy in her marriage to Palomo, dreams of taking a lover.

Unfortunately, Santiago loses partial control of the factory to his half-brother Cheche after gambling too much with Eliades (Joseph T. Nagle) on cockfights. Cheche wants to bring in machines to roll the cigars, effectively replacing the voice of the lector with the noise of industry. However, Cheche’s “progressive” spirit is really about his bitterness over his wife leaving him. This bitterness infects the family, threatening its destruction as well as the destruction of cigar factory traditions.

Alexander Salamat and Raylene Gutierrez are charming as Santiago and Ofelia. Gutierrez fully realizes Ofelia’s practical façade that covers a spirit as romantic and imaginative as her daughter Marela’s. Salamat conveys Santiago’s frustrations with his inadequacies as a businessman as well as his fierce desire to hold his family together in traditional ways.

Hannah JoBeth Roark plays the flighty but lovable Marela with just the right amount of insouciance and innocence and in stark contrast to the unhappy Conchita, played with intensity by Elizabeth Elliott. Her passionate affair with Juan Julian (Carlos D. Perez Beltran) exposes all of Conchita’s own repressed desires. Beltran’s Juan Julian is intriguing and just slightly dangerous as his sensitivity and passion for stories stirs the emotions of those around him. Danny Shaw deftly captures Cheche’s twitchy personality, and Jordan Foote practically quivers with repressed rage and jealousy over Conchita’s affair.

Director Julie Rae Mollenkamp has skillfully guided her performers in exploring these characters, helping them evoke the reality of this Cuban immigrant family. Dennis Christilles’ set design adds to this production’s success. The beautifully painted floor framed by gauzy curtains juxtaposed with the plain workstations of the factory is a visual realization of the conflicts between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern. Likewise, Ellie Kleinwort’s costume design shows off all the characters’ love of the beautiful even in the atmosphere of the factory. Cheche is the only character not extravagantly — even elegantly — dressed. His subdued business suit reminds us of his dedication only to the efficient making of money.

Inspired by Tolstoy’s novel, “Anna in the Tropics” explores the passions and tragedies of lives caught in a moment of transition, exposing the fragility of the family bond when it is faced with a dehumanizing modern world. To reinforce that bond, they must nourish their imaginations with stories.

“Anna in the Tropics” continues with shows at 5:30 p.m. today and April 11, 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, all at the Inge Theatre in KU’s Murphy Hall.