Adam Driver is a great disrupter.

This volcanic actor’s entrance in the lopsided new revival of Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This,” which opened on Tuesday at the Hudson Theater, is prefaced by a fanfare of violent pounding. It is 5 a.m., in a loft in Lower Manhattan. And it sounds as if the Incredible Hulk, feeling very impatient, is in the hallway — or maybe a runaway cyclone.

When the door opens, what is revealed behind it does not disappoint. With long, flailing limbs and a face molten with anguish, Mr. Driver explodes into view with an outsize fury that makes everyone and everything around him seem Lilliputian. And a production that has so far felt pleasant and prosaic is flooded with the anarchy of life in extremis.

The last time I can recall such an impressively violent Broadway entrance was more than 30 years ago, when a rising actor named John Malkovich appeared in the same part. Playing a coked-to-the-gills restaurant manager named Pale, Mr. Malkovich seemed to morph overnight from quirky character actor into a leading man of dangerous sex appeal.

Theater lovers still talk about the excitement of that performance. And I would wager that decades from now, people will be speaking with the same gratified wonder of Mr. Driver’s very different but equally compelling Pale.