Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – On the fast track to unsustainability: Pony Cam’s crowd-pleasing BURNOUT PARADISE holds a mirror to audiences

• By drediman
• November 27, 2024
• No Comments

Sometimes all one needs during this time of heightened turmoil and uncertainty is a night of pure escapism to make things right again — even if only for a little while. Such was my takeaway after I attended Burnout Paradise at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Devised by the folks at Pony Cam — an Australia-based experimental theatre collective — the crowd-pleasing piece (which proved to be a hit earlier this year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is a chaotic, admittedly gimmicky, and altogether smashingly entertaining display of endurance, creativity, and community-building (in these respects, the piece reminded me of Miet Warlop’s similarly physical One Song, which recently played NYU Skirball).

Over the course of the evening, four members of Pony Cam — Claire Bird, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub, and Hugo Williams; each quite literally kids at play who push themselves to the point of physical and creative exhaustion — metaphorically challenge themselves to lead balanced lives across various aspects of modern living, namely Survival, Admin, Performance, and Leisure. More specifically, these involve cooking and serving a three-course meal (to two willing audience members!), campaigning for the arts, enacting ludicrous performance art pieces, and performing a high volume of random leisurely tasks (e.g., going trick-or-treating, getting a massage, waxing hair, etc.) — all the while running on treadmills (!), the act of which represents the relentless hustle of everyday. Segmented into four 10-minute sections, the ever-present performers switch between treadmills, all the while attempting to fulfill all four duties and surpass the record for the number of miles run (at the performance I attended, it all came thrillingly down to the wire).

Upon first glance, Burnout Paradise offers little in terms of serious food for thought. Indeed, the immediate payoff is the entertainment derived from the escalating hilarity and tension that ensues (I can safely guarantee with certainty that no two shows are alike). But it’s not all empty calories, however. In its encouragement of audience participation to accomplish these tasks, the piece creates an intrinsically communal experience, in the process going a long way in restoring faith in people and our ability to accomplish things together. As such, it conjures a sort of utopic vision while holding a mirror to the audience — is this really what modern life has become? If so, we are on the fast track to unsustainability.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

BURNOUT PARADISE
Off-Broadway, Experimental Theater
Pony Cam at St. Ann’s Warehouse
1 hour, 5 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 1