Three-time Emmy Award nominee Adam Driver (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Girls) is set to return to the stage in 2019 in the first Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1987 drama Burn This. Tony winner Michael Mayer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Spring Awakening) will direct the production at a theatre to be announced.
Driver will play the role of Pale, the dangerously sexy restaurant owner who falls for a dancer named Anna. Set in downtown New York in the 1980s, the story follows their troubled relationship in the wake of a shared tragedy—the death of Pale’s brother and Anna’s roomate and dance partner.
Driver made his Broadway debut in 2010 as Frank Gardner in Mrs. Warren’s Profession; the following year, he played Basil Anthony in Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy.
On screen, the actor stars as Kylo Ren in the newest Star Wars films: 2015’s Star Wars The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which premieres worldwide December 15. He was most recently seen in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, and just completed shooting Spike Lee’s film The Black Klansman. On television, he is well-known for portraying the role of Adam in Lena Dunham’s hit HBO series Girls.
The role of Anna, as well as additional casting and a creative team for Burn This, will be announced at a later date. David Binder (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Of Mice and Men) produces.
The original production of Burn This premiered Off-Broadway in 1987 starring John Malkovich as Pale and Joan Allen as Anna. The play transferred to Broadway that same year for a critically-acclaimed run at the Plymouth Theatre, earning Allen a Tony Award for her performance.
Burn This was originally scheduled to return to Broadway in 2017 directed by Mayer and starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Pale. Producers Stacey Mindich and Jessica R. Jenen were attached to the revival, set to be the first production in the newly renovated Hudson Theatre. In the end, Gyllenhaal inaugurated the space with another production: the revival of Sunday in the Park with George.
