Lanford Wilson's "Burn This" explodes with passion. Out of the embers comes an honesty and fearlessness that is breathtaking.

The Huntington Theatre Company's current production smolders and sparks, but this talented company hasn't yet generated enough friction to make the explosions knock our socks off.

Individually, the actors deliver strong performances, but director Susan Fenichell hasn't found a way to bring each of the flames together to create the necessary blaze.

Nat DeWolf as Larry, the play's observer and conscience, creates the most complete balance of reliable anchor and vulnerable outsider. Spinning in a dangerously unstable orbit around Larry are Anna (Anne Torsiglieri), her boyfriend Burton (Brian Hutchison) and Pale (Michael T. Weiss), the brother of Larry and Anna's friend Robbie.

The death of Robbie and his lover Dom in a freak boating accident has shaken Anna out of her protected shell, forcing her to confront feelings about her creative potential and her willingness to open herself up to someone else. Robbie had been her mentor, encouraging her to make the leap from dancer to choreographer and sharing a living-working loft with her and Larry. Torsiglieri delivers much of Anna's insecurity about her gift, but we never really feel her loss for her friend or her sense of being adrift without him.

As Burton, Hutchison is appropriately self-absorbed, but he needs a little more dash and swagger to convince us he's the rich boy more comfortable hiding behind his screenplays' sci-fi characters rather than writing about things that might explore a more nebulous world of love and connections.

Into this slightly stiff, formal dance of relationships comes Pale, blowing in like a tornado, so out of control you can almost see the trail of debris he leaves in his wake. Weiss is all over the place, waving his arms, tearing at his hair, pulling at his clothes, "flicking myself into little pieces" over his brother's death.

Pale, whose nickname comes from the V.S.O.P. cognac he favors, struggles with his feelings of guilt over his distance from his gay brother and his own macho posturing. Weiss brings all of the character's boundless energy to bear, but he has some trouble bringing out Pale's calmer, more subtle moments and his aching vulnerability.

When Pale meekly makes a pot of tea dressed in Anna's lavender-flowered bathrobe in Act II, he appears as a tamed beast who's unleashed the rage in everyone around him. It's an appropriate transformation, and Weiss carries it off with aplomb, but it feels awkward because Torsiglierihasn't made her own moth-to-the-flame attraction to him as believable as it should be.

Playwright Wilson allows his language to take flight, offering each of his characters the opportunity to soar with monologues about the cynicism of the movie business, the tragic nature of love, the mad family ritual of wakes and funerals, and the fleeting nature of life itself.

Ultimately, although Wilson pushes buttons of lust, freedom, guilt and vulnerability, Fenichell never manages to allow her actors to do more than circle each other. "This isn't opera, this is life," Larry says - but this production of "Burn This" is missing the operatic exuberance of an ensemble willing to throw caution to the wind.

("Burn This," presented by the Huntington Theatre Company, Boston, through Dec. 12 )