Loneliness and alienation lead people to do strange things, and playwright Lanford Wilson has explored many of them in his works.

Perhaps his best-known play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley’s Folly (the first in his “Talley Cycle”) concentrates on the effects of loneliness.

Wilson seems drawn to characters whose lives are orderly but empty in some way. Wilson wrote three plays in 1987, including Burn This, now on the boards at Cygnet Theatre.

Dancer and fledgling choreographer Anna (Jessica John) sits brooding in the apartment she has shared for three years with two gay friends: fellow dancer Robbie and wise-cracking adman Larry (David McBean).

Robbie, with a world of promise before him, has drowned along with a friend in a freak boating accident, and Anna is trying to figure out how to go on without her favorite dance partner.

Anna and Larry have just returned from the funeral and the stress of dealing with Robbie’s family – a group that had not only been ignorant of his homosexuality but also had never seen him dance onstage – not to mention Anna’s obligation to play the “grieving girlfriend”, makes the weekend exhausting.

Anna’s true boyfriend, screenwriter Burton (Manny Fernandes), is the kind of man every mother wants her daughter to marry. Clearly crazy about Anna, he is endearingly candid about his supposedly glamorous job:

“Beautiful writing is anathema to a movie … When a good movie happens, which it might, on a roll of the dice, once in five years, it’s like this total aberration, a freak of nature like the Grand Canyon … They can’t wait to remake it in another 10 years and fuck it up the way it’s supposed to be.”

This very New York trio sits around, alternately grieving and wise-cracking, until a foul-mouthed whirlwind in the form of Robbie’s brother Pale (Jeffrey Jones) barges in, bull in a china shop style, high on drugs and alcohol, to pick up Robbie’s things.

Pale offends everyone with his potty mouth and ill-considered opinions, but Anna is strangely (and incredibly) attracted to this wild creature who hides nothing, and whom she, in stereotypical female fashion, adjudges a wounded bird somewhat akin to herself. It’s difficult to imagine a pair more disparate; even the old “opposites attract” can’t cover this situation, and the strong emotions unleashed come from a place the audience has not been given access to, which makes them ring false.

Still, Wilson has a way with clever dialogue that makes any of his plays worth seeing (Larry, tsk-tsking about Robbie’s tastelessly ornate casket, likens it to “a giant Spode soup tureen”). But this is not one of Wilson’s stronger dramatic efforts.

Fortunately, high production values save the day. Guest director Kristianne Kurner (artistic director of Carlsbad’s New Village Arts Theatre) has assembled a splendid cast including Jessica John (artistic director of Backyard Productions) as Anna, the always-reliable David McBean as Larry, and local favorite Manny Fernandes in the underwritten role of Burton.

But it’s Jeffrey Jones’ Pale you’ll remember. Wilson has been called an actor’s playwright; here is one prime reason. Pale is a misnomer: there’s nothing subtle about him. He’s a sort of Stanley Kowalski on steroids, raging, rattling, drinking, swearing, weeping and ultimately seducing Anna. It’s a performance worth seeing.

Burn This runs through Feb. 13 at Cygnet Theatre. Shows Thurs.-Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Sun. at 2:00 p.m.; Sun. at 7:00 p.m. on Jan. 30 and Feb. 13. For tickets call (619) 337-1525 ext. 3, or visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com for a link to the Cygnet Theatre’s website.