INTERVIEW: Finding the passion in ‘Burn This’ on Broadway
Photo: Burn This stars, from left, David Furr, Keri Russell and Brandon Uranowitz. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by Polk & Co. with permission.
Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, now receiving a revival at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway, is a show built around the overwhelming passion of its four central characters. Whether it’s passion for dance, passion for love or passion for understanding, the emotions that fuel this narrative are evident almost immediately.
The play stars Keri Russell (The Americans), Adam Driver (Star Wars), David Furr (Noises Off) and Brandon Uranowitz (Falsettos). Russell’s Anna and Uranowitz’s Larry, two best friends and suite-mates, have recently lost a dear friend in a freak boating accident. This friend was quite close with Anna; they were, in fact, dance partners and adored each other’s artistry.
Furr’s Burton, a screenwriter, is in a relationship with Anna and comes over the apartment to talk about the funeral of their good friend and Burton’s next writing project.
Driver’s Pale is the mysterious outsider who disrupts the lives of Anna, Larry and Burton. He storms on stage, talking incessantly and bringing an air of violence and attraction.
Furr, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Noises Off, came to the production thanks to its casting director, who had placed the actor in the Broadway revivals of both Noises Off and The Importance of Being Earnest a few years back.
“He brings me in for theater when he’s casting and if he thinks it’s something I’m interested in,” Furr said in a recent phone interview. “For whatever reason, he thought I would be a good match, and I think Michael Mayer, the director, might have also asked around about me. … So I had to audition for them, and that went well enough for me to come back the next day. Then I did a scene, and Keri Russell was there. Brandon Uranowitz was there, so I read with them. And that was it, so just a couple of auditions for the core people.”
Furr remembers reading Burn This, a 1980s play, when he was a student at Appalachian State University in the early 1990s. It’s a monologue-rich show, and back when he was a student Furr was in search of a piece for an audition.
“In those days, you’d go into the play closet where they had all their plays and hunt through plays looking for monologues to audition with or practice with, and I remember pulling out the edition of Burn This that had Joan Allen and John Malkovich [on the cover],” he said. “I saw that it had a bunch of monologues in it, and I remember reading it in those days and being a little young for it. I didn’t quite understand what was going on necessarily, so I put it away. But I do remember reading it a long time ago; this was back in 1993 or something like that. But I’ve never seen it, so when the audition came up, I got to read it kind of fresh and didn’t have any preconceived notions about it or anything like that.”
The character of Burton is a key one for the plot. He is in a relationship with Anna, and they seem to love each other’s company and conversation. He’s also a screenwriter who has made money, but not much poetry, with his words. His latest project, which came to him while on an outdoors getaway, is a sci-fi flick he hopes will restore his faith in the written word.
“The good thing is I like him,” Furr said of the character. “It’s not like he’s making jokes, but I found him to be a fun and potentially funny character. I think that was one of the things that maybe they liked about my audition was finding the humor. The play is about passion in love, and passion in art and passion in friendships. I like that he’s passionate about his writing. He’s kind of been a screenwriter mostly for paychecks over the course of his writing career, but he’s certainly aware of that and is hungry to write something significant or something relevant and substantial. And I like that about him. He’s an artist that’s grappling with his own compromises, and I find that to be a really interesting and compelling thing to think about.”
Wilson was a legendary playwright, a man who brought important themes to Broadway and beyond. His characters — some gay, some straight — are visceral creations, struggling with relationships and the modern times. Burn This is one of his most respected works, and Furr has fallen in love with the words and how Mayer has directed them at the Hudson Theatre.
“I think [Mayer’s] got lots of great insights for us, and I also think one of the great things that he’s been able to bring to the table is not over-directing,” he said. “I think this is the type of piece where you don’t want to notice the direction at all — I guess in any play, but especially in a play like this when it’s just four people and they’re talking to each other. To just allow that to sit when it needs to sit and move when it needs to move takes a patient director’s hand, and I think he’s been able to be there as a director when he’s required and let the characters have space when there’s maybe not as much direction in terms of movement or things. So I appreciate the fact that he’s been very delicate with his direction, and then, of course, he also just brings a lot of insights and a lot of good ideas in terms of fleshing out what’s going on and fleshing out the characters.”
Furr has been on the Burn This train since the beginning of the year when the four actors sat down with Mayer and an old friend of Wilson’s. This pre-rehearsal discussion was tremendously helpful for the actor.
“We all sat around for about four or five days, and read the play and talked, and read the play and talked, and read the play and talked,” he said. “We kind of went into discussing how each character came together, how they knew each other, what the relationships were, what our backgrounds were, the relevance of the other people that are mentioned in the play that you never see, so we kind of got to dive into a lot of that stuff over the course of a week in January. We put it away for about a month because other people had stuff to do, and we weren’t starting rehearsals until February. Then we came back, and, of course, those conversations continued.”
Furr has had quite a successful career, in several different settings. On Broadway, he has appeared in Noises Off, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Accent on Youth, Cymbeline, The Rivals, King Lear and The Importance of Being Earnest. His TV credits include Mr. Mercedes, Bull and The Man in the High Castle, among others. He even appeared in The Americans, with Russell.
Love of acting goes back to Furr’s days at Appalachian State University.
“It’s something I always thought would be fun, and when I was in high school, I would watch the plays and think, oh, I really would like to do that,” he said. “Whenever auditions came up, I’d chicken out and not do it, but in college I had friends that were all going to some auditions for the one-acts. And I decided to go along and audition. I think for this one act it was down to me and one of my friends, and I told the director, ‘I don’t know if I can learn all these lines. I honestly don’t know. I’ve never done it before.’ So they made me a stage manager instead for that. My friend got the part, and it was such a fun experience even being a stage manager. From that point on, I was like this is loads of fun. I hadn’t pegged it as a career choice. It was fun and new and exciting, disciplined.”
He added: “I just got heavier and heavier into it over the course of the next couple years of college. I was on stage and writing music for plays. I had my first [William] Shakespeare experiences and [George Bernard] Shaw experiences, and by the time college was over, it seemed like that was maybe what I was choosing to do. And somehow I’ve been able to do it ever since.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Burn This, starring David Furr, Keri Russell, Adam Driver and Brandon Uranowitz, is now playing the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
