With its current production of Lanford Wilson's Burn This, Hat Trick Theatre has taken a giant step toward becoming an important artistic institution in the Tampa Bay area. Inspired acting by a carefully selected cast, sharp direction and meaningful design make this unusual love story one of the most successful productions by any local company this year.
Burn This starts deceptively slow and then builds to a stunning climax that's at once surprising and inevitable. You say you love serious theater? Well, hurry on to the tiny Silver Meteor Gallery in Ybor City and see a production that people will be talking about for a long time to come.
At the center of Burn This is a choreographer named Anna, who until recently was living with gay dancer Robbie. When the play opens, Anna has just come back from Robbie's funeral: The New York Nijinsky was killed, we learn, in a freak boating accident. As Anna tries to recover from the loss of a man who was also her artistic mentor, we meet Burton — her screenwriter boyfriend, a rather self-satisfied fitness nut who carries on conversations while he does sit-ups — as well as Larry, Anna's other gay roommate, whose advertising firm concocts holiday cards for Chrysler. Everyone tries to assuage Anna's grief, but she's inconsolable: Robbie meant more to her than perhaps anyone else in her life.
And then Pale appears. Pale is Robbie's older brother, come to collect Robbie's clothes — and he's also a desperate, anguished drug user, spitting out ideas at top speed, lurching from wild thought to wild thought, offensive and brash and pathetic and, at almost every moment, near tears. It's 5 a.m. when he bursts into Anna's apartment, and as Anna tries to find some sort of response to his madness, he defines himself as a "relief pitcher" and a "fireman" and removes one piece of his clothing after the next.
Finally, his enormous pain and aggression — and his resemblance to Robbie — lead Anna to a wild thought of her own, and the two become lovers. The next morning things are gentler, and Pale, who turns out to be married, leaves Anna's apartment as if for the last time.
But it's not that simple. Anna tries to resume her life as Burton's partner, but Pale returns and the two men fight. Anna is torn between her two lovers, attached to Burton by a feeling close to friendship, attracted to Pale for reasons she herself can't quite fathom. As Larry tries to mediate, Anna has to decide not only what each man means to her but also where to find artistic inspiration. She's sure she doesn't like Pale; he's admitted, after all, that he's never felt anything for anybody. And he's married. And has children. This is a no-win situation — right?
Bender as Anna is well nigh impeccable. If acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances, this is top-flight acting, rivetingly truthful. Bender's Anna is grief-stricken, confused, charming, sexual, afraid of Pale, attracted to Pale, baffled, strung-out and oh-so-human. Since winning the Best of the Bay award a few years ago, Bender hasn't had much opportunity to show her great versatility; but with this show, she's back, playing the whole keyboard, making it look easy.
Kevin Whalin as Pale is a formidable presence. He's not as tuneful as Bender, but he displays his few notes with such ferocious intensity that you have to worry if he can keep up so much energy until the final curtain.
In past plays at Hat Trick and elsewhere, Whalin came across as boyish and likable, but in Burn This he's a man, out of control and not a bit ingratiating. Chris Rutherford as Larry is a center of calm in a stormy story, and he earns our laughter and our respect as he tries to talk sense to people without that quality. Only Steve Fisher as macho Burton doesn't quite convince us of his reality. Fisher has some fine moments but too often he shouts when he should be merely speaking and doesn't move us when Wilson's text is giving him a prime opportunity.
I congratulate director Joe Winskye on two counts: for assembling a top-notch cast (some other Hat Trick productions, without careful casting, were doomed from the outset) and for eliciting from that cast emotionally intelligent performances. Winskye also designed the set, in which a kind of half-ruined apartment is set upon a turntable. Between scenes, the turntable is rotated sufficiently to allow us a new perspective on the same space. Finally, Lani McGettigan's costumes are all first class. Acting, directing, design — what else could you ask for?
I know what: more of the same. If the success of Burn This is the result of a genuine artistic evolution, we'll see the same rigorous standards applied in productions to come. That's what I'm hoping for — that Burn This will be for Hat Trick what Cloud 9 was for Jobsite several years ago: the production that turned the corner. I'd love for this company to join American Stage, Jobsite and Stageworks as a venue where one can more often than not find top work.
I'd love to be able to look at a Hat Trick schedule with the same sort of anticipation that I feel when considering the programming of those other, older theaters.
It's not impossible. No more impossible than the scorchingly successful production that is Burn This.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2008.