Review - Burn This

As I was watching the Broadway revival of Burn This (which I was unexpectedly invited to; thank you, generous Tony voter pal!), I was immediately thrown into a maelstrom of feelings, memories, and confusions.  At intermission, I mentioned to my Tony voter pal that I wish I could do something like the memory-erasing thing they did in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I can just see shows for what they are, not for what they provoke in my brain, or be surrounded by the baggage I bring to them.  Do I just live in my brain far too much that everything I watch now triggers...something?  I guess I just have a lot of unresolved 'stuff' that I should maybe bring up with my therapist.  I don't know.  Moving on.  All I can say is I had a strong reaction to Burn This...


Burn This, of course, was written by the wonderful and sorely-missed Lanford Wilson.  I was fortunate enough to work tangentially with him a few times and he was a kind and gentle man.  His plays are also achingly lovely - I was a fan of his work long before I had the chance to meet him.  You can remind yourself of my thoughts on a couple of revivals that ran after he passed away, if you like:  here are my thoughts on Talley's Folly, and on Lemon Sky.  I also was privileged to attend Lanford's touching memorial service, which I talked about HERE.  So I already went into the beautifully-restored Hudson Theatre with a bit of melancholy, even before the show began.  And then I was practically sent over the edge of my emotions when I read the beautiful tribute in the Playbill written by the oh-so-wonderful Terrence McNally - here's just the first line, which made me weep: "Of my generation of playwrights, Lanford was the Orpheus who sang the sweetest songs, the poet who found grace and beauty in the humblest circumstances, and the only one of us who found his own, unique voice from the very beginning."  There's only more gorgeous tribute to Lanford following that opening line.  The stage was set for me to be uber-emotional.

And...I was.  Burn This begins with a solitary woman, in black, sitting on the floor of her spare apartment, smoking a cigarette.  Her face is a mask, frozen, still, as if she's trying to keep a handle on her emotions.  There's a knock at the door - it takes a few minutes for her to decide to let someone in to what she's experiencing.  She finally opens the door to her boyfriend and the action starts from there.  Anna, the solitary woman, has come back from a funeral for her roommate and dance colleague, Robbie.  Her boyfriend, Burton, has flown back from a retreat after hearing about Robbie's death.  Anna then describes the horror of the funeral and spending so much time with Robbie's family, who apparently had no idea he was a dancer or that he was gay.  At least that's the impression Anna got and she's so angry about the death of her dear friend that she's completely irate at the thought that his family, his blood family, had no idea who he was.  There's no comforting or consoling her from this thought.  She is channeling her grief, I think, into this anger at Robbie's family.

The conversation between Anna and Burton, and then with her other roommate Larry, is filled with imagery and metaphor and beautiful language.  They mourn together, rail together, and the scene ends.  The next scene begins apparently very early in the morning - there's banging on the door and Anna goes out to answer it.  In lumbers a large, manic, sort of menacing character, ranting about the neighborhood, parking, and anything else that comes into his mind.  Anna gradually realizes it's the late Robbie's brother, Jimmy (also known as Pale).  You discover that it is a month later and Pale has finally come to retrieve Robbie's things.  Here's where I started to get lost in my own head: Adam Driver, the amazing actor who plays Pale, reminded me so much of an old boyfriend, it was freaky.  So I was practically experiencing Anna's bewilderment and attraction at the same time she was.  This is probably where I should mention that I haven't seen Burn This before and it has been many years since I read it.  So I was really on the roller coaster ride.  I guess I should have my therapist read this blog post.

photo credit: Matthew Murphy

Adam Driver is phenomenal - he captures the menace and the sensitivity in Pale beautifully.  Lanford Wilson's dialogue is often so poetic and even Pale's rough, blunt, blue-collar speech has a poetic beauty and logic of its own.  He built his monologues beautifully and used his outsize emotion and personality terrifically well.  He is just an absolute stage star - he grabs your attention and does not let it go, but not in a showboat way, but in the way that true stage creatures fill the room.  Even putting aside the part that he reminded me of an old beau, he impressed me monumentally.  I could probably go on and on about the richness and the spontaneity he brought to his performance, but I should probably stop fangirling.  Oh, he also found the humor and the whimsy in the role; I might talk more about that in a bit.

I also loved Brandon Uranowitz as Larry, Anna's roommate and conscience.  He was rueful and funny (oh my gosh, his facial expressions when he was stuck in the living room during a conversation he did NOT want to hear were fantastic) and he had a fascinating subtext with David Furr as Anna's boyfriend, Burton.  As we were leaving the theater, my Tony voter pal and I were discussing if there was maybe something there between Larry and Burton.  I'm still not quite sure.  I wouldn't mind if there was.  I had a little bit of a harder time with Keri Russell as Anna - I applaud her skill as a member of an ensemble; she was there, full stop, when the other characters were in control of the scene and she was listening and reacting.  Her engagement and empathy were very apparent.  I found her to be almost a beautiful mirror where all of the other characters could see themselves, and change themselves.  But when it was her turn to be the center (and even though her character is very reactive, there are still moments when she is the hub of the wheel), she perhaps stayed back a little too much.  Yes, Anna is afraid and doesn't want to really give over to deep emotion, but I needed a little more of something.  Even just one indication or look or acknowledgement of the tsunami that is Pale coming into her life would've helped me out.  Of course, that makes it my performance instead of hers, but I did just want a little bit more.  I understood why the two characters needed each other, but I'm not sure she did.  She is stunningly beautiful though and had a pleasant rapport with the other actors.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

I feel Lanford often wrote of loneliness and need and it is everywhere in Burn This.  That is probably what kept me internally sobbing throughout, after I got over the whole 'Pale reminds me of *old boyfriend's name here* and that makes me Anna' thing.  The walls that these characters build, all of them, not just Pale and Anna, and the absolute aching need, but paralyzing fear, to be loved was everywhere.  I just had a broken heart for these people throughout.  But I often felt as if the rest of the audience needed to stop laughing (the play has a lot of humor, yes, but there's also so much sadness) and start observing the play's pain.  I mean, I had a lump in my chest and I wanted to have a huge wailing cry after the show was over, it moved me so much, but the audience was still laughing.  I don't know.  Maybe I just don't laugh enough?  I know there are a lot of ways to respond to work, but I pretty much always want an audience to stop laughing way before they do.  That's probably on me.  For a matinee audience, they were pretty well behaved, though there were two people whose phones chirped or vibrated approximately every two minutes, which leads me to believe they were either (a) drug dealers, or (b) people who probably shouldn't go to the theater in the first place.  Either one.  Someone hissed to one of the chirpers "Turn that off!"  and she wailed "I thought I did!"  I thought about offering to check it for her during intermission and I probably should've, because it did the same thing during the second act.  And the loud vibrating phone did, too.  Don't these people know I was trying to have a catharsis?!

Even if you don't have an old relationship resembling the one on stage, I highly recommend everyone see Burn This.  I want Lanford's work to be seen and remembered (and hopefully this will lead to other revivals) and I think Adam Driver's performance is one of those people will talk about for a long time.  You know how people still talk about John Malkovich in the original Broadway production of this play?  I think Driver will have the same kind of historical legacy with the play, too.  He's that good.  Now please excuse me while I go off and try to figure out these unresolved issues I apparently have...