THEATER REVIEW: BURN THIS

Flame on

By Ed Rampell 

A Tony and Pulitzer Prize Award winning playwright, Lanford Wilson’s Burn This had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in 1987. When that prestigious Downtown L.A. venue launched its revival of the play on March 23, an unfunny thing happened on the way to the Forum: Wilson, alas, died of pneumonia the day after Burn This’ return engagement began.

Burn This is quintessential Wilson, who often depicted damaged souls struggling to find love and their way in our complicated, troubled world. This Wilsonian dramedy evinces empathy for suffering humanity and is set during the Reagan era, although it remains very contemporary. Burn This opens hard on the heels of a tragedy that has befallen a household in a lower Manhattan loft that had been composed of two gay males and one straight female. After Anna’s (Zabryna Guevara) initial hesitancy, she allows Burton (Ken Barnett), a preppy sci fi screenwriter, to enter, and he awkwardly tries to comfort her.

Their on again, off again, in again, out again relationship remains unclear throughout the play. Apparently, they have been lovers (of sorts), but the indeterminate nature of their union is deliberate. It’s fuzzy not only the audience, but for the characters, too. Especially Anna, a dancer who has hung up the ballet shoes and leotards in order to become a choreographer. According to the dialogue, Anna has lived a pretty sheltered life, which has never really been pierced by Cupid’s arrow. This hetero woman shares a New York loft with two gay men, including the humorous ad man Larry (Brooks Ashmanskas). There may be a loving platonic bond between them, but Anna’s sexuality remains unfulfilled, if not thwarted, by the domestic arrangement’s back story. Aim inhibited, unrequited love, and all that Freudian razzmatazz.

From out of the blue, enter Pale (Adam Rothenberg) into this emotional, if not physical, ménage a trois. As his nickname implies, this character is beyond the Pale; sexually charged, he has a yen for Anna, and becomes a hunk-a hunk-a burn this love. The relationship that develops between Pale and Anna reminded me, both comically and dramatically, of the affair between the star crossed lovers portrayed by Cher and Nicolas Cage in John Patrick Shanley’s 1987 Moonstruck. The play turns on which suitor Anna will choose: rich, shallow Burton or intensely emotional Pale. Interestingly, playing against type, Burton is an artiste (although there a few good lines of dialogue deriding the artistic pretensions of movies, which the L.A. aud got a kick out of), while Pale is a restauranteur. Ashmanskas’ Larry, however, doesn’t play against type. His is a mincing, campy, portly homosexual with a snappy comeback line and zinger for (almost) every occasion. When called an opera queen, Larry denies the appellation and accusation, quipping that, at most, he’s “an opera lady-in-waiting.” Larry adds comic relief to the smoldering Burn, although the playwright -- who wrote moving gay-themed works such as 1964’s one-act, The Madness of Lady Bright, and 1973’s off-Broadway hit, Hot l Baltimore, which featured an early same sex couple and became a short-lived Norman Lear TV sitcom -- never loses sight of the fact that the all-too-human Larry has needs of his own, and is not merely a figure of ridicule.

Nicholas Martin deftly directs the ensemble cast, which delivers skillful, truthful performances that mostly ring true. Scenic designer Ralph Funicello’s realistically rendered set -- where all of the onstage action takes place -- is spot on, absolutely loft-y. Its New York backdrop enhances and imbues the play with what Billy Joel called that “New York state of mind.” Although as mentioned this story could take place nowadays, it’s also a period piece, so the use of terms like “crackerjack” (as in “superb”) can be forgiven.

However, a couple of things raised my critics’ eyebrows. When Pale reveals his actual relationship status to Anna after they make love, this is little if at all commented upon, and I doubt this would be the case in real life. I’m not sure what the ethnic background of Zabryna Guevara (she previously played an Iraqi-Assyrian Texan character in the play Lidless, and for all I know, she’s the granddaughter of Argentine Che Guevara) is, but she’s not Caucasian. The only possible mention of her ethnicity comes in fleeting lines regarding Anna’s hair, which are not necessarily racial references. The fact is that in the New York of the Mayor Koch era race was a major issue, and it’s highly unlikely that interracial romances would not have at least been commented upon. In the playbill photo of Anna’s understudy, Emily Sandack appears to be white, so I suspect that Lanford the humanist did not write an ethnic specific character. Elementary, my Dear Wilson.

Wilson’s work reminds me of that of other scriber of soul-troubled folks, Tennessee Williams. But unlike the characters in A Streetcar Named Desire and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (currently being presented in repertory by A Noise Within at Glendale), the dramatis personae of Burn This have the possibility of being redeemed by love. Perhaps Lanford was less damaged goods than Tennessee?

I asked New York actor Danton Stone, whom I grew up with, about the dearly departed playwright, who had written roles for Stone, as in Angels Fall. In the 1980s I saw Stone star in the Circle Repertory Company, John Malkovich-directed production of the Drama Desk award winning play, Balm in Gilead, with Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalfe, and on Broadway in Fifth of July with Chris Reeves. Stone, who co-stars with Judd Hirsh in an upcoming production of Art by Yasmina Reza (who also wrote of God of Carnage, just opening at the Ahmanson Theatre) remembered Wilson well. 

“Ah, Lanford. He was the best artist I ever knew, he was a mentor, an ‘art-father’ to me and to a generation of other writers, actors, designers, and directors," said Stone. "He led by example, in that he did his work -- which was to create imaginary communities where the life force, and the need to connect and be loved was the most powerful thing in it -- with dedication. And yes, he was a hilarious and serious writer, who had compassion for the best and the brightest, but also for the dumb, the uneducated, the poor and the addicted. He gave honest voice to the lonely souls in any room, and he made each person’s private imagination sing with poetry and humor. He truly loved actors, and he wrote his people for specific actors to play, which is a very rare thing. And he generously gave his plays to all of us, to perform, forever, to see, and to read from. His plays are his gift to the whole world, [to] Humanity. Most of all, Lanford Wilson was the greatest humanist playwright of our time.”

Burn This runs through May 1 at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown Los Angeles. For more information: 213/628-2772 ; www.centertheatregroup.org