The Huntington's 'Art of Burning' could use more fire

Scorned lovers lashing out in film and on TV is a well-worn trope. But when done well, with characters that audiences root for, the vengeful justice portrayed can be as entertaining as it is alarming. In Kate Snodgrass’ “The Art of Burning,” centered on the dissolution of a marriage and a custody fight, the narrative, in which the lead character is accused of arson, lacks the searing intensity one would expect from such an evocative title.

With direction from Melia Bensussen, The Huntington's production at its Calderwood Pavilion stage, starts with a painter, Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), and her husband Jason (Rom Barkhordar), in a grey-walled room. The two have enlisted long-time friend Mark, (Michael Kaye), as a mediator helping with their divorce details. Over time, snippets of their beleaguered marriage spill out in dialogue. The most heart-wrenching blow for Patricia is Jason’s infidelity with a younger woman, Katya, who works in the same building as her husband. There’s also a good deal of sexism, lack of respect, and more between the couple.

Though it’s Patricia and Jason’s battle that Snodgrass uses to anchor the play, the drama between Mark the mediator, and his wife, Charlene, depicted by the hilarious and skillful Laura Latreille, is much more fun to watch. The pair are in couples counseling to manage communication issues and infidelity, and in their scene together, Mark wants to get to the bottom of a long-upheld lie between them.

Overall, Kaye and Latreille’s acting feels more natural than Krstansky and Barkhordar’s, and the love the two characters share, despite their struggles, is apparent.

Clio Contogenis, who portrays Patricia and Jason’s teenage daughter Beth, also performs well. When faced with having to choose between living with her mother and father and later sharing an account of an assault, Contogenis’ emphatic monologues have bite.

The moving panels in the set designed by Luciana Stecconi, bold, color-changing lights by Aja M. Jackson, and sound and original music by Jane Shaw helped move the audience through time and space throughout.

Snodgrass, professor emerita of The Practice of Playwriting at Boston University, has an impressive resume in the theater world. She is a former Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival National Chair of the Playwriting Program, a former playwriting fellow at the Huntington and co-founder of the Boston Theater Marathon at Boston Playwrights Theatre where as artistic director she championed and helped develop many of Boston’s leading playwrights. She’s written numerous plays, including “The Glider,” “Haiku,” and, during the height of the pandemic, a lovely, short radio play, “Overture.”

For nearly an hour and a half, “The Art of Burning” moves slowly without much happening. The lack of character development left me disinvested in what transpired, and Patricia’s act of burning Jason’s antique desk is mentioned a few times in the play. Still, that simmering anger bubbling inside someone long enough to make them explode in such an act is absent. The show is more of smoldered fire than the raging, flickering flame of a tale one might hope for.

The Huntington's production of “The Art of Burning” runs through Feb. 12 at the Boston Center for the Art’s Calderwood Pavilion.