LUKEWARM RECEPTION FOR ‘BURN THIS’

Will “Burn This” set Broadway on fire? Maybe.

Lanford Wilson’s romantic comedy impressed a lot of people at the Mark Taper Forum last year, did well at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre earlier this fall and got a general nod from the New York critics this week at Broadway’s Plymouth Theatre.

The New York Times’ Frank Rich admired it less than the others. Rich liked John Malkovich a lot as Wilson’s hero, Pale, with his “dems-and-dose accent, his unexpected bursts of sensitivity and his slightly androgynous sexuality.”

But even here Rich found “a small but significant degree of self-consciousness” in the performance, a sense of its being “an extended freak show that splits off from the play proper.”

The play proper, Rich found somewhat “undernourishing,” although “always intriguing.” He was more intrigued by a sideline gay character, Larry, than by “the showier romance at center stage.”

Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press had a thoroughly good time at the show, starting with Malkovich’s “unnervingly intense” Pale and very much including Joan Allen as Pale’s target-for-tonight.

“It’s a free-wheeling urban romance that’s funny, contemporary and not afraid to be a little sentimental around the edges,” Kuchwara wrote.

Clive Barnes of the New York Post thought that Marshall Mason’s actors were just about perfect and liked Wilson’s script, although he didn’t necessarily believe it. “Take it not too seriously and enjoy.”

Howard Kissell of the Daily News also said yes to “Burn This,” calling it “a powerful, dazzlingly comic play about love, art and social disintegration in a SoHo loft.”

So “Burn This” may have a life. The AP’s Kuchwara added this sobering note: “It could be the only new American play to open on Broadway until the new year.”

Director George Abbott celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this year. An anecdote in a recent Playbill magazine suggests how he got that far: About 20 years ago, Abbott was having lunch at Howard Johnson’s with Broadway composer Albert Hague. All Abbott wanted for lunch was a bowl of soup. Hague had a bowl of soup and a hot dog.

When the waitress brought them their orders, Abbott looked at the hot dog and said to Hague: “You live well.”

IN QUOTES. Eric Bentley in his new book “Thinking About the Playwright” (Northwestern University Press): “That a political play will not turn a nation’s politics around should not deter anyone from writing a political play.”

IN QUOTES ANNEX. Katharine Hepburn in the New York Times: “I know how people look when they’re naked or throwing up and I don’t want to see it.”