There's a little deja-vu in Signature Theater's revival of Lanford Wilson's 1987 play, Burn This, for those who have recently seen Broadway's Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune, another romance between two diametrically opposite characters. Anna (Catherine Keener) is soft, naive, introspective and sensitive. Her unlikely paramour, Pale (Edward Norton), is bombastic—a cursing, drinking, drug-taking emotional bulldozer. What unites them is their common anger, though differently expressed, over the sudden death from a tragic and unnecessary accident of Robbie, a brilliant gay dancer. He was Anna's roommate and artistic inspiration for her attempts at a career in choreography. He was Pale's younger brother, whose sexual revelation in death brought shame and revulsion to his upstate, blue-collar family. In the barebones loft (beautifully if unglamorously realized by Christine Jones' seedy set and Pat Collins' gloomy lighting), Anna, just returned from a nightmare of a funeral, quietly grieves, supported by another gay roommate, Larry (Dallas Roberts), a warm and witty art director whose remarks on corporate Christmas card designs (think the car as a non-religious symbol worshiped by everyone), Detroit, Baccarat champagne flutes, and gay New Year's parties, provide most of the play's humorous bright spots, and her boyfriend, Burton (Ty Burrell), a self-centered though loving, novice playwright who is not really struggling due to his family's wealth. (His riotous riff on the evils of the movie industry towards playwrights is obviously a cause célèbre of the author). While they both adore Anna, her life is centered on her career. Some weeks later, at an unlikely predawn hour, Pale bursts into their cocoon like a breath of foul air, rudely awakening Anna to collect his brother's effects. He is all loud, wailing pain, in his feet, stomach, throat and heart, cursing everything urban from parking conditions to the people who "aren't human" (one of whom he has just punched out in the local bar). Norton, as Pale, delivers a roller-coaster ride of emotions from bitter and nasty to weepy and wanting. His litany of professed likes zoom from hurricanes and city-wide fires to the smell of Downey softener on clean underwear, a guy, we learn, who can compose concerti in a shower but cannot read music. He declares, sans provocation, "getting laid is okay, but a really hot shower is better." He is high on cocaine and alcohol that induces an hilarious treatise tracing back the origins of imaginary "I'm sorry" toilet paper to the unwitting tree that spawned it. About his dead brother's talent he taunts, "you say he was good. I never saw him (dance) but I say he was shit." The ever gentle Anna responds "talk to me, I'm a good listener" later describing the encounter as "it was all a very bird-with-a-broken-wing syndrome." The scene gradually morphs into a magnificently written, directed (by James Houghton) and performed slow-motion seduction, as they come together, ever so tentatively, in mutual pain and exhaustion. The next morning, just when you think there's been an emotional connection, Pale drops the zinger, on his way out, that he is married and the father of two. No apologies and, apparently, no regrets. Wilson's script gets fuzzy in the second act when, two months later, Pale again bursts into the loft, very drunk, at 2 AM after New Year's eve, and, as Anna is about to accept Burton's marriage proposal, drops the bomb (to the audience as well as the prospective groom), "Oh, you're fucking him, too?". As Burton leaves and Pale gets tossed out of her life, the play loses focus, hindered by an Anna either underwritten, under-directed or too muted in performance. Her oddly understated response to a successful performance of her work, and general lack of sensuality, Burton's touching yet tentative attempt to re-enter her life, Pale's sudden transformation from underclass renegade to cuisine sophisticate as manager of an upscale restaurant in New Jersey (of all places!), the failure to convince that a romantic connection can be made between the two disparate types—all fail to resonate. Norton and Keener, both primarily film actors, fall prey to a technique which lacks the projection necessary in theater. No such restriction applies to an excellent Dallas Roberts and audible Ty Burrell in a slender role. And, despite his occasional aural limitations, Norton's role as Pale, so much more vividly, if unevenly, written, renders those around him mere props at times. Passionless and poorly paced, after three hours, Burn This fizzles instead of sizzles.
