Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – A magnetic Adam Driver combusts in the Broadway revival of BURN THIS by Lanford Wilson

• By drediman
• April 19, 2019
• No Comments

Adam Driver and Keri Russell in Landford Wilson’s “Burn This” at the Hudson Theatre. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

This week, the Broadway revival of Burn This by Lanford Wilson opened at the Hudson Theatre. Although I’m familiar with much of Mr. Wilson’s output (Talley’s Folly, Fifth of July, Balm in Gilead, The Hot l Baltimore – all indelible works in my theater education), I had actually never seen Burn This, which in its original 1987 Main Stem production at the then Plymouth Theatre starred the delectable duo of John Malkovich and Joan Allen as Pale and Anna, two unlikely lovers grieving the loss of a loved one (his younger brother, her close friend and colleague in the dance world). The current revival is led by film stars Adam Driver and Keri Russell, respectively.

Burn This seems to me a good example of how plays used to be written. That is, with clear, telegraphed intentions, albeit bathed in sex and hung on a sturdy frame. Although it can be argued that Mr. Wilson’s play is longer than it needs to be (the playwright’s own Talley’s Folly effectively conveyed essentially the same odd couple romance in a compact 90 minutes) and that many of its characters have become less convincing since the play was written more than three decades ago, there’s no denying that the interloper character of Pale is a knockout role, albeit one that’s difficult to get just right. He’s the wild card that makes any production of Burn This either combust or fizzle.

And boy does Mr. Driver combust as the contradictory Pale. After an inert first scene, his Pale descends on the play like a caged animal let loose, literally almost breaking down the door into Anna’s downtown Manhattan loft to wreak havoc on the status quo. Mr. Driver’s performance is brash and instinctive, and you simply can’t take your eyes off of him. The three others in the cast, including an admirably game Ms. Russell, do just fine, but they ultimately can’t shake off the the cobwebs that have accumulated on their characters over the years. But when the magnetic Mr. Drver is onstage, none of these minor misgivings seem to matter. Michael Mayer directs with his typical sure hand and a keen sense of the play’s rhythms. To his credit, the play skips along and seems brisker than its considerable running time would lead you to believe.

RECOMMENDED

BURN THIS
Broadway, Play
Hudson Theatre
2 hours, 40 minutes (with one intermission)
Through July 14