Theater Review - Pale fire

Ironically, a man named Pale is by far the most vivid personality in Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. In the Actor’s Express production, Daniel May plays the profane, bigoted restaurateur who explodes into the loft apartment of mild-mannered New York bohemians like one of the Sopranos loose among the cast of “Friends.”

Pale barges unannounced into the apartment before dawn one morning to pick up his dead brother’s belongings. Initially outraged by the intrusion is aspiring choreographer Anna (Cynthia Barrett), with whom Pale’s brother used to both dance and live. Pale rants about Manhattan, snaps at other people for his own errors, interrupts himself and waves a hand wrapped in a bloody cloth. But he grieves for his brother with the same intensity, and Anna begins to get the hots for him in spite of herself.

The playwright makes Pale one of those super-sized theatrical parts, a character who evokes the muscularity of a young Brando and anticipates the swaggering-chef persona of Anthony Bourdain. May turns the role into a kind of walking blast furnace, radiating emotion even when quiet and closed off. Jasson Minadakis, having previously directed The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? at Actor’s Express, again proves himself an efficient conductor of heat.

Nevertheless, the Burn This script becomes little more than drab scaffolding for the character. Anna spends the rest of the play chatting at length with the other men in her life — her surviving roommate and gay ad man, Larry (Freddie Ashley), and her sort-of boyfriend Burton (Theroun Patterson), a wealthy screenwriter. While Patterson and Ashley give credible, likable performances, they’re too vanilla and the characters overstay their welcome. Perhaps Barrett holds herself too much in check as well, but she conveys Anna’s divided heart with sensitivity. Plus, with her fiery red hair and Sydney Roberts’ dramatic costumes, she cuts a striking figure.

Were the play more complex, perhaps it wouldn’t feel dated, but its references to cocaine, Jerry Falwell and Bruce Springsteen plant its roots too deeply in the 1980s. Thematically, Burn This sets up a fairly simple dichotomy between fiery passions and playing it safe. When Anna and her pals obsess over minor concerns, too often we impatiently think, “Yeah, so? When’s Pale coming back to fuck shit up?”

Burn This plays through June 5 at Actor’s Express, 887 W. Marietta St., J-107. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 5 p.m. $10.75-$26.75. 404-607-7469. www.actors-express.com.