Review Roundup: BURNOUT PARADISE Opens at St. Ann's Warehouse

Pony Cam's Burnout Paradise is making its off-Broadway premiere at St. Ann's Warehouse. Four performers on four treadmills….a delusional and physical celebration of our struggle to establish boundaries in life. Check out what the critics had to say!

Four performers on four treadmills….a delusional and physical celebration of our struggle to establish boundaries in life. The cast includes Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub, and Hugo Williams.

Australia’s Pony Cam enacts the recklessness, euphoria, and optimism that comes before burnout. What begins as a simple wager between performer and audience becomes a desperate attempt to complete a series of escalating tasks that confront the limitations of the performers’ bodies, spirits, and minds. This is not an endurance feat. Nor is it performance art. It is an unraveling realization that the system we participate in is not designed for us.

Roma Torre, NY Stage Review: 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.

Amelia Merrill, New York Theatre Guide: Burnout Paradise is a fun and quick evening at the theatre, and at first glance it does not hold enough water for cultural commentary. But as the Pony Cam members rated their individual levels of burnout, I found myself more invested in their self-assessment than in my own burnout. It was funny: I sat in the audience with my notebook, trying not to think too hard about thinking about the show before me, as I often must.

Loren Noveck, Exeunt: 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.)

Average Rating: 70.0%