See it if You want a multi-faceted story, each character with their own dysfunction. Acting by all characters was very good!
Don't see it if You don't like straight acting.
See it if Love great acting and great writing Adam Driver is great!
Don't see it if If you’re not romantic
See it if You enjoy fine acting & a play by Lanford Wilson. Actors hold the audience in the palms of their hands. Laughter & drama!
Don't see it if You only like musicals.
See it if you want to see Adam Driver catching fire
Don't see it if you are sensitive to strong language Read more
See it if You like a resonating well acted funny play about grief and love.
Don't see it if You don’t like plays with profanity and about relationships, love and art
See it if Talented cast gets past characters who could easily fall into boring stereotypes; root for each of the characters despite their obvious flaw
Don't see it if Dialogue reflecting the prejudices of the 1980s can be jarring; Never really gets past the point of predictability
See it if You want to see 2 well known actors perform live.
Don't see it if you think hollywood actors can't act.
See it if great acting and great writing
Don't see it if your looking for an insipid musical Read more
"If Driver bestrides 'Burn This' like a colossus — everyone else seems to shrink beneath his shadow when he’s onstage....Mayer’s version, the play might be titled 'Waiting for Pale.' This is partly because Ms. Russell...never seems in any way undone...This 'Burn This'...only rarely stirs the heart. In the ideal production, it creates the sense of fire meeting fire in a folie à deux between two ill-matched yet inexorably bound lovers. What we have in this case is a one-man conflagration."
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“Driver gives it everything he’s got. He’s terrific, and slightly terrifying...Pale is irresistible to Anna, too, and that’s where the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1987 quasi-romance bumps up against its own limitations...The play features highly actable parts...Yet Anna is, for the most part, a noncharacter...After an angry first scene, she fades into a frustrating gray...Anna exists to be fought over and passed around, and even when she asserts herself, she is not to be believed.”
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“Mayer’s revival...is pretty dang good — mostly because, playing the human furnace at its center, Adam Driver is straight-up great...The play’s inherent risk, though, is that Pale will eclipse Anna by sheer force of personality, and despite Russell’s best efforts, this ‘Burn This’ is indeed Driver’s show...Driver keeps the show aloft...And he’s funny as heck...Driver’s performance is certainly this production’s crown jewel.”
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“In a performance of astonishing physicality...Driver maintains that dangerous energy...It's a credit then to the luminous Russell and the two supporting actors that nobody gets swallowed up in Pale's vortex...Wilson's play remains a compelling account of love...In choosing to dial up the humor, Mayer has undercut the anguish that is the drama's foundation, exposing ‘Burn This’ as just a circuitous journey to an inevitable romantic conclusion...Still, this is a dynamic production.”
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“Mayer’s kinetic, consistently engaging production...Pale is a fantastically chewy part...And Driver owns every moment of it...Russell looks gorgeous...But she doesn’t seem entirely comfortable on stage...Driver moves through it all like his own weather system, maybe the most entertaining hurricane onstage this year...It’s too bad that the love story between Anna and Pale never completely convinces us that they are in fact, on fire; it sparks and smolders, but it’s not quite that kind of burn.”
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“A finely-tuned revival that features incendiary performances by Driver and Russell, playing two lost souls in a powerful and passionate dance of denial...Vital to the success of this fascinating, flawed and overlong play is the casting, especially in the leads that require an audience to believe that such disparate people can find a safe haven in each other’s arms...Driver is riveting here, and audiences will identify with Anna’s dilemma of both wanting him to leave and needing him to stay.”
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"No amount of high-class craftsmanship can conceal the fact that 'Burn This' is a smiley-faced variation on 'A Streetcar Named Desire'...The four parts are respectively played by Keri Russell, Adam Driver, David Furr and Brandon Uranowitz, all of whose performances have a shallow, one-notey feel. While I suspect that Michael Mayer’s direction is at least as much to blame for their collective lack of intensity, Mr. Driver is glaringly miscast as Pale."
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“Nasty and big as a tree, Driver’s Pale is a one-note samba in a play that cries out for subtlety and nuance. There is nothing about Driver that inspires sympathy...In the shadow of his loutish and overwhelming performance...Russell seems colorless...’Burn This’ offers a chance to absorb a play that is based on the ...writing instead of the...’concept’...Even if this production offers more ashes than flames...’Burn This’ is still earnest, riveting and well worth a visit.”
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