In a gladiatorial race against time, four performers on moving treadmills perform an escalating series of tasks. Burnout Paradise is a hilariously cathartic caricature of a painfully familiar experience: running oneself ragged trying to get everything done. In Burnout Paradise, Pony Cam welcomes audiences with a simple wager: Can the four performers meet a dizzying array of challenges while collectively running 20km on treadmills before their time runs out? If they fail—and, they often do—they offer the audience their money back.
At the performance I attended, they did manage to get all of it done in record time, but even if they had failed, I wouldn’t expect any money back. For 65 minutes their “near burnout” is pure entertainment for the rest of us. It’s packed with suspense: will they succeed? There’s humor: just watch one of the guys attempt to change into a Speedo without embarrassing himself. There’s also a satisfying catharsis. And given the added option of having a drink at the bar before or after, “burnout”, at least when others are threatened with it, is “paradise” indeed.
Is it gimmicky? Absolutely. Gimmicky on multiple levels at once, even: the treadmills, the time clock, the merch table. It’s chaotic and splashy and overwhelming and silly. But it’s nonetheless built on a foundation of real emotions: on the one hand the “runner’s high” of thinking you’ve cracked the code of doing it all; on the other, the weary recognition of the deep, exhausted pit of burnout. (The show introduces each performer with a graphic that includes their current stress level.) And while there’s something serious at the root of it, and the performers enact their tasks with utmost sincerity–even the most ridiculous elements–the overall tone also embraces the absurdity of the whole endeavor. (And they cap it off with a little pop of joy in the form of a treadmill-based dance number that you may recognize from a music video a while back.)
2024 | Off-Broadway |
St. Ann's Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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