The first thing you notice about Michael T. Weiss, who plays the volatile, edgy Pale in Lanford Wilson's "Burn This," is how perfect his voice is for the role. Part smoker's rasp (though he's not a smoker), part fog horn, it's voice as cudgel.

Weiss, primarily a film and television actor perhaps best known for playing Jarod in the NBC series "The Pretender," seems to have the presence for the role, at least in person. Add to the voice the tousled hair, the three-day stubble, the lean, rangy body, and you've got an actor who seems tailor-made to play Pale, one of the sexiest, most dangerous characters to command the stage since Stanley Kowalski bellowed "Stella!" in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

In "Burn This," which begins previews at Huntington Theatre tonight, Pale shows up at the New York loft where his brother, Robbie, a gay dancer, lived with roommates Anna and Larry. Robbie has recently died in a boating accident, and Pale shows up to collect his clothes. He walks in and starts shooting his mouth off about the neighborhood, potholes, parking, and it escalates from there. His presence is alarming, to put it mildly.

On a recent sunny morning, Weiss is sitting with a reporter in a tiny coffee room at the Huntington Theatre. An assistant comes in and starts making coffee for the cast and crew. Weiss asks him if he could hold off a bit. He was nice about it, but definite. The guy left.

Pale is very complicated, Weiss says. "He wants desperately to be understood. He's an intellectual and an artist trapped in a blue-collar New Jersey body. He feels the world in an extremely passionate way. I think he's pained by the amount he feels."

Pale's intrusion into the lives of the two roommates sends everyone's life on a new trajectory, particularly Anna's. A dancer-turned-choreographer whose biological clock is running, she's on the verge of making a commitment to her perfectly acceptable if unthrilling boyfriend. And her creative juices dried up when Robbie died. All that changes when Pale walks in. Ka-bam!

Weiss is fascinated by the situation the play poses: "We have a visceral, emotional gut attraction to what's dangerous, with people you're not supposed to be with, because on paper they're not the right match for you, but the gut, the heart, the loins are all saying 'This is the one, this is the one.' Everything else is saying, 'No, not the one. Not the proper material.' And which one do you listen to?"

This guy knows where he stands on the subject: He'll go with the gut any time.

The 42-year-old actor is no stranger to playing on-the-edge guys; his film career is studded with them: among them, a perverted drug addict in the Oliver Stone-produced "Freeway," a corrupt cop in "Bones," with Pam Grier and Snoop Dogg. He's been on the soaps "Dark Shadows" and "Malibu Road." He also played a gay lover in the film "Jeffrey," based on Paul Rudnick's play of the same name. "The Pretender," which ran from 1996 to 2000, gave him a chance to play all kinds of characters -- a new one every week.

"I think I had one of the best roles on television," Weiss says. "Every week it was a new wardrobe and a new set; it was like doing a movie every week. I got to play 80 characters."

Weiss started relatively young as an actor. Growing up in Chicago, he began studying acting at the Chicago comedy troupe Second City when he was in high school.

He was selected to train at the University of Southern California, where his classmates included such actors as Forest Whitaker, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Edwards.

"I did a lot of theater in those days, and then I got ... what's the word ... on the road of film and television," Weiss says. "I didn't want to say 'sidetracked' because I do love to work in front of the camera, but I love the theater and it's a treat to be back on the stage again."

It's been several years since he performed onstage, and in "Burn This," Weiss has some big shoes to fill. John Malkovich, who originated the role of Pale in 1987, was regarded as an incendiary scenery-chewer, impossible not to watch. Weiss saw him in the original production at the Mark Taper Forum.

"I was blown away by what he did," Weiss says. But he has no plans to copy Malkovich's vision.

Director Susan Fenichell, who's worked at numerous regional theaters, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and Seattle's Intiman Theatre, says she wasn't worried about Weiss's lack of recent stage experience; the fact that he had theatrical training and good early experience onstage was enough for her.

"He's a lovely actor, incredibly spontaneous and incredibly precise at the same time," she says. "He's constantly exploring; there's not a lazy bone in his body. He's rigorous."

So, in keeping with one of the play's themes, she's taken the risk. "As is often the case, the death that precedes the story propels everybody into uncharted territory," she says. "It's a play about looking inside and seeing where you are and being bold enough, or not, to step up to that moment and do what you need to do, even if it's dangerous or risky."

Weiss says he loves the play and how contemporary it feels.

"When you work on it, you see that it's so poignant about how people have trouble committing to relationships, how our careers become more important than our relationships, how we're holding out for this perfect thing and it might never come. The play was written in the '80s and I think it really holds true now."

Catherine Foster can be reached at foster@globe.com

"Burn This" begins previews tonight, opens Nov. 17, and runs through Dec. 12 at the Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Ave. Tickets: 617-266-0800, www.huntingtontheatre.org.