Sheer awe is what most of the audience must have felt after they walked away from taking in director Allison Tkac's ingenious presentation of Landford Wilson's "Burn This." The play was a comedic drama whose main themes covered the process of grieving personal losses as well as the hardships of living as a creative artist. The strongest aspect of the show came from the powerful and moving performances given by the strong actors, all of whom are School of Music theater students.
The beginning of the play ascends to the lofty New York City apartment where Anna (Kelly King Simpson), a choreographer of modern dance, is dealing with the loss of her former friend and roommate, Robby (whose life as a homosexual dancer went unnoticed by his own family).
Anna has a rich, would-be fiance named Burton, who is played with human realism by Jonathan Baker. Larry, Anna's other roommate, was played hilariously by musical theater senior Matt Schicker, who provided most of the play's comic lines. A volcano of dramatic energy can be found in Alex Alioto, whose character of Pale (older brother of the deceased Robby) was played beyond perfection with fast-paced thinking and spouting of random thoughts and irkings.
In a very emotional scene performed brilliantly by Simpson and Alioto, Pale and Anna descend into the binds of love based on depression and confusion. After spending the night together, Pale leaves her, and all is forgotten until he appears at her door on the following New Year's Eve - while Burton and Anna are pursuing a romantic adventure themselves. The secret of the one night stand comes out into the open, and Burton becomes enlightened to the sad triangle of love.
One special scene, in which Anna details staying the night at Robby's parents house after the funeral, explains how she stayed in a room where a young bug-collecting relative of Robby's had pinned his butterfly collection to the wall. Although he thought the bugs were dead, they only had been anesthetized by the rubbing alcohol, and not completely killed. During the night, Anna woke up to the sound of the walls flapping as the now awake butterflies were trying to escape. Symbolic of the way in which an artist is caught in his personal art, this scene attempts to demonstrate Anna's emotional state after going through Robby's death.
Each performer provided a different aspect of the show's success. Schicker's best moments came when his sarcasm was voiced after very emotional scenes. His best and most flamboyant scene was one in which Anna learns that Larry had been listening to their entire conversation as he danced around the apartment singing "I'd Rather Be Blue" a la Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl." This situation makes fun of the way in which Pale had sung a line from the song to Anna on their first night together.
Baker's interpretation of the intelligent and charming Burton proved very admirable, but the one bad choice made within the show unfortunately comes with the arrival of his character. Clad in awfully tacky multicolored bicycle shorts, Burton's entrance seemed more of a clownish introduction, than to the sophisticated writer that he proved to be. The ugly shorts did not seem to be a characteristic choice that Burton would make, and while it didn't add to his characterization, it did contradict with the persona that he was trying to establish.
Alioto is an acting powerhouse, whose timing was never off during the show. One would assume that an actor would jumble his lines with all that Pale has to say, but Alioto delivered them swiftly and deftly as he attacked all that Pale's mind jumps to.
The characterization of Anna did not seem like an easy task to conquer, but Simpson handled the job quite well. While being funny as well as powerfully emotional, her Anna proved to be the most endearing character within the play. Her sexy, yet sometimes tearful performance kept the hearts of all those in the audience falling in love with the way in which she captured both Pale's and Burton's hearts.
It is not going too far to say that this is one of the best student productions to be presented on campus in quite a long time. Hopefully, audiences will come away from this show understanding the amount of personal experience that artists put into their work. And, likewise, we should appreciate the mountain of talent that the University students who contributed to this show possess.