STAGE REVIEW : ‘Burn This’ at Skylight Theatre

The chemistry of a play changes from production to production.

Jeffrey Tambor’s lucid, gritty staging of “Burn This” at the Skylight Theatre illuminates this process. The original staging of Lanford Wilson’s play was energized by the lightning flashes of John Malkovich’s performance as Pale, the hot-under-the-blue-collar brother of a recently deceased gay dancer.

Without that stunning overload of charismatic power, the play assumes its real shape. It’s actually a play about the dancer’s roommate Anna: a dancer-cum-choreographer who finds her professional and personal life shattered and reassembled after the dancer’s death. The relationships are clearer and the inner core of Wilson’s drama more accessible.

This doesn’t mean that Duke Moosekian’s Pale is less impressive, just that it’s more within the framework of the play. It’s a many-faceted creation that isn’t subordinate to, but amplifies Katie Mitchell’s Anna. She is completely believable as a dancer who realizes that her statements will be better phrased as a choreographer and that her desperate loneliness just may find its fulfillment in the dangerous and volatile Pale. She realizes Anna’s potential with crystalline simplicity.

John Cardone gives Anna’s third roommate, Larry, a bittersweet tint riddled with wry humor. He underlines Larry’s own sense of solitude in his duel of innuendo with Kevin Kilner, as Anna’s solely self-extinguishing current flame.

At 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., through July 28. $12.50. Information: (213) 466-1767.