T. CHARLES ERICKSON A celebratory New Year's Eve ends badly with Michael T. Weiss as Pale, Brian Hutchison as Burton, and Anne Torsiglieri as Anna in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This," through Dec. 12 at The B.U. Theatre.

This definitely is true of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This," which is being revived by the Huntington Theatre Company 17 years after it was produced on Broadway with John Malkovich starring as the fiery, explosive Pale. The role is being played at the Huntington by Michael T. Weiss, best known for his work in the NBC television show "The Pretender," in which he played 80 characters, a different one each week.

Mr. Weiss certainly doesn't disappoint in "Burn This" as he storms into the New York loft apartment where his gay brother Robbie lived before dying in a boating accident that occurred just before the plays opens. He thrusts himself into the life of Anna, who had been Robbie's dance partner and close friend, turning her relatively safe and comfortable world upside down.

Mr. Weiss plays Pale as a lit fuse attached to a stick of dynamite with the accelerant being cocaine, alcohol, a job as restaurant manager that's eating him up, and a 17-year marriage that's become little more than a dried husk.

Mr. Weiss paces and takes over the set as if he'd been coached by Al Pacino.

And he spews out foul language. This definitely is an R-rated show. The moment he comes crashing into Anna's loft very late one night, he begins by denigrating her neighborhood. When he finally pauses long enough to take a breath, Anna interjects, "I'm sorry, do I know who you are?" The play is punctuated with many such witty, ironic lines.

Pale is the title character in the sense that he applies the imperative "Burn This" to his own life. As Mr. Wilson was working on the play, he came across the words in a letter in E.M. Forster's novel "Howards End." He wrote them at the top of each page of his script as a directive to himself to write with total passion, holding nothing back. Pale clearly has his roots in Tennessee Williams' characters, specifically Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Tom Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie."

"Burn This" also seems written for Larry, a gay friend of Anna's who shares the loft with her and works in an ad agency. "You don't have to talk about whores to me," he says. "I work in advertising." Larry is the comic relief in the show. More important, he's a fulcrum point for the tempestuous relationships between Anna, Pale, and Burton, Anna's boyfriend who's a successful screenwriter of films he can't even bear to watch.

Nat DeWolf brings just the right degree of swishiness to Larry -- enough to be colorful but not so much as to swamp the humanity that his character is really all about -- while delivering his lines with terrific humor. The one weakness in the way Larry's character is written is that he doesn't seem to have much of a life of his own; he's primarily Anna's friend and protector.

Anne Torsiglieri as Anna does a good job of alternately resisting and succumbing to Pale's advances, though her performance doesn't reveal as much about her character as it might. No doubt this is due partly to the fact that Anna is more acted upon than someone who acts.

The way in which Anna's attitude towards Pale turns on a dime seems somewhat unbelievable -- it's a weakness in the writing -- and director Susan Fenichell might have helped Ms. Torsiglieri define this shift with more specificity. Brian Hutchison does a good job of creating Anna's unexceptional boyfriend Burton.

In spite of providing material for some very enjoyable performances, "Burn This" is not a first-rate play. It has an expansive, somewhat shapeless quality that makes us feel like we're watching the events take place in real time.

At the heart of the play are arguments that don't have a lot of substance to them. Surely, we can accept the notion that Pale with his dangerous life style might make a more exciting lover than Burton, but not a real alternative as a life partner. That might have been more plausible in 1987, or even more so in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but not in today's ultra practical world.

And Pale's statement that he feels more with Anna than he ever has with his wife and two kids in 17 years could easily be picked apart by any amateur psychologist.

The loft space created by scenic designer James Noone is spectacular as it looks through large windows onto a fire escape. And Candice Donnelly's costumes are elegant and sexy.

The performances are often exciting; just don't ask too much of the play.

"BURN THIS"
WHAT: A REVIVAL OF LANFORD WILSON'S 1987 PLAY ABOUT A TROUBLED MAN WHO COMES CRASHING INTO A WOMAN'S LIFE.

WHERE: HUNTINGTON THEATRE, 264 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON.

WHEN: THROUGH DEC. 12.

TICKETS: RANGE FROM $14 TO $69 AND CAN BE PURCHASED BY CALLING (617) 266-0800 OR GOING ON LINE TO WWW.HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG