BURN THIS. Lancaster Dukes to 9 March.
Lancaster
BURN THIS
by Lanford Wilson
Dukes Playhouse To 2 March 2002
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS 01524 598500
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 February
High energy living with supercharged emotions become explosive in the Dukes' studio setting. Some American playwrights' works flow into Britain. Lanford Wilson's dribble. Part of the dynamic generation that arose in the 1960s, he's never caught on over here like his famous coeval Sam Shepard. Yet Ian Hastings' revival of a play seen in London with John Malkovitch as Pale in 1987, shows Wilson's worth attention.
Pale's the most colourful character, bursting like an angry thunderbolt into the liberal-artistic oasis of the Manhattan loft where choreographer Anna lives with gay flatmate Larry. She's just back from the funeral of their live-in friend Robbie. His family are so conservative they assumed she was Robbie's wife. It's not for them to know one of their tribe was gay, and happy as Larry with it.
Pale may be a restaurant manager, used to organising a hectic environment, but internally he's an emotional maelstrom, as Terence Beesley's high-energy, instant-reaction performance shows. He'll out with homophobic abuse, yet he's also full of conspiracy theories about Robbie's fatal accident. He blunders around, presupposing violence, though when it comes it's Anna's lover, the scriptwriter Burton, who provokes it and whose martial-arts training outsteps Pale's clumsy lunges.
Performed in the round, on a set slightly spoiled by an intrusive pillar, Hastings' production catches the dynamics of these characters, without fully explaining how Pale's lumbering vulnerability leads Anna to bed with him.
Ashley Jensen's Anna is the emotional fulcrum, carrying the weight of the men's dilemmas well, though Doug Cockle as Larry keeps himself emotionally in a separate room. Wilson uses him for quips and comments, but it's the other men, so strongly attached to her, who bear down on Anna's personality. Simon Merrells' Burton is smoothly uncomprehending of her sympathy with Pale. Jensen conveys Anna's emotional perception and determination to organise her life amid the confusion and competing demands surrounding her.
What's to be burned is any paper on which the truth about feelings has been honestly expressed. As the play ends, New Year strikes; Wilson skilfully captures both a spirit of renewal and the sense the process won't be easy. It's this friction which ignites the play's dramatic energy.
Pale: Terence Beesley
Larry: Doug Cockle
Anna: Ashley jensen
Burton: Simon Merrells
Director: Ian Hastings
Designer: Dee Sidwell
Lighting: Brent Lees
Sound: John Bates
2002-02-25 01:54:14