SOURCE: Edwards, Christopher. “Pale and Interesting.” Spectator 264, no. 8448 (9 June 1990): 46.

In the following excerpt, Edwards provides a favorable assessment of Burn This, specifically hailing the performance of John Malkovich as Pale.

Theatre is a corrupt art. At any rate, live performance is a means by which flawed writing can be redeemed. Nothing new about that idea, of course, but you are forcefully reminded of it in the present production of Lanford Wilson's Burn This at the Hampstead Theatre. Anna (Juliet Stevenson) is a New York dancer whose brilliant gay dancing partner has just died. Anna and her other gay flatmate Larry (Lou Liberatore) are mourning their friend when his shaggy-maned doped-up brother Pale bursts into the apartment. Pale is anything but what his name suggests. As played by John Malkovich, this must be the most highly charged performance in London. Ferociously railing against motorists, New York, all of modern...