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Theatre in Review: Burnout Paradise (St. Ann's Warehouse)

Dominic Weintraub, William Strom, Hugo Williams, Claire Bird. Photo: Teddy Wolff

Uncharacteristically, I beg for your pity: There's no rational way to describe the barely controlled chaos of Burnout Paradise, which instantly takes the title of maddest entertainment in town. The five utterly committed, if certifiably insane, members of the Melbourne, Australia-based collective Pony Cam have conceived a sixty-minute torture test that pushes the meaning of performance to the limit. Four of them step onto exercise treadmills, each bearing a title: On "Survival," one is assigned to cook a three-course meal. On "Admin," another is tasked with filling out a grant application. Next is "Performance," which involves delivering a devised performance piece. The most appalling is "Leisure," which comes with a to-do list that includes, among other things, juggling, shaving, brushing teeth, wrapping a gift, reading a bedtime story, and staging a trick-or-treat session -- all without getting off the machine.

Just to complicate matters, the running time breaks down into four increments of ten minutes each, after which the performers switch treadmills and tasks. And, as a kicker, Ava Campbell, the unflappable emcee/timekeeper, records the mileage racked up by all four. If they don't beat their personal best -- 12.8 miles at my performance -- the audience allegedly gets a refund. (To prove the point, Campbell cheerfully waves an enormous wad of cash.) You certainly don't get that guarantee at, say, Sunset Boulevard.

To top it off, audience members are regularly solicited for assistance; they are also invited to step up to the merch table in mid-performance to buy T-shirts and other souvenirs. And they can order cups of Gatorade, which Campbell will deliver to their seats.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's the old game show Beat the Clock meeting Monty Python's Flying Circus, a nonstop procession of non-sequiturs and physical gags combined with the wild card of audience participation. No two performances can be alike. Among the highlights on the night I attended: At the audience's suggestion, the grant application was filled out for a performance at Forest Hills Stadium, with City Center, the opera festival Prototype, and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo listed as co-sponsors. (The stadium, the grant alleged, "is an underutilized space.") To fulfill a request for photos, audience members took shots with their smartphones and emailed them to the cast for uploading. (The paperwork is projected on a large upstage screen for all to see). Devised performances included company members Claire Bird recreating her grade-school dance recital (doing high kicks to "Can't Help Myself" by The Four Tops) and Hugo Williams delivering Hamlet's soliloquies. A "deer hunt" was enacted using an animal-shaped piece of cardboard and a dart gun. Fulfilling the requirement for a romantic gesture, Williams also re-enacted John Cusack's boom-box moment from Say Anything. Fifteen in the audience were solicited for a game of bingo. Meanwhile, a baguette was shredded (course one), tomatoes and cucumbers were cut up (the salad course), and water boiled on an induction burner for the pasta, while a pair of volunteers bravely waited for dinner to be served.

Did I mention that this all unfolded pretty much simultaneously? That the Sheena Easton hit "My Baby Takes the Morning Train" was played repeatedly while the mileage was totted up? That, apropos of nothing, the cast performed its homage to the rock group OK Go's Internet-breaking video "Here It Goes Again?"

Burnout Paradise is exceptionally brief -- it ran less than my travel time to and from St. Ann's -- yet it is wildly original and consistently riotous, the company applying itself to its nonsensical goals with total conviction. (Besides Bird, Campbell, and Williams, the cast includes William Strom and Dominic Weintraub; everyone is equally endowed with true grit.) If you look closely at the piece, you may find a comment on our overscheduled lives, how we tend to find ourselves running in place these days, constantly busy but achieving -- what? But, really, you're too likely to be laughing to entertain such thoughts.

If you need a little lift just now -- and who doesn't? -- Burnout Paradise may be the ideal tonic. It certainly seemed to work as a collective mood elevator the other night. The exit music, played after the curtain call, is Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money." At Pony Cam, they certainly do, delivering a unique, uproarious brand of fun. --David Barbour


(15 November 2024)

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