Review: Burnout Paradise Is the Wildest Show in New York

The creator-performers of Pony Cam, the Australian theater collective behind the new off-Broadway show Burnout Paradise, wear the toll of their art on their bodies. We can see it in their wiry frames, honed from running several kilometers on the treadmill each night while performing a series of absurd tasks for the audience’s amusement. We also see it on the skull of William Strom, who without hesitation hands electric clippers to a stranger to perform the “shave” portion of the to-do list written on a stage right white board. Will he have any hair left by the time the show closes on June 28?

Burnout Paradise is thrilling to watch because the physical stakes are real, as evidenced by the kinesiology tape currently framing Dominic Weintraub’s knee. You may tell people that you watched the recently closed Winter Olympics for the artistry of the figure skating, but the darkest, most primitive corner of your brain tuned in to watch them fall. Pony Cam knows this. They accept it and have harnessed that very human impulse to see the body pushed to its limits to create the most irresistibly entertaining show in New York. This is theater at its most athletic, a show that nightly transforms the typically staid off-Broadway audience into a pack of rabid sports fans cheering at triumphs and howling at defeats.

The game is fairly straightforward: Four performers (Strom, Weintraub, Hugo Williams, and Claire Bird) must complete a series of tasks (cooking a three-course meal for two, filling out an arts grant application, performing a childhood dance routine, engaging in a multitude of leisure activities) while running on one of four treadmills marked “survival,” “admin,” “performance,” and “leisure” for the corresponding task. Every 12 minutes they hydrate and rotate to the tune of Sheena Easton’s “9 to 5” as fifth cast member Ava Campbell tallies the distance each performer has run.

Since it is not enough in the 21^st century to merely risk one’s body, Pony Cam have also made the stakes financial. If they do not complete every task and beat their total milage from the previous performance, audience members are entitled to a refund. “So many artists drain their pockets to even get a work on stage,” Bird explained in a recent interview with TheaterMania, “It is a huge thing in the arts to be like ‘If we’re not going to do it, take everything we have.’”

The concept is radical enough on paper, but in practice it is utter pandemonium: Strom beseeches an audience member to shoot a cutout duck with a nerf gun as Weintraub valiantly attempts to change from his running shorts into a speedo without flashing the audience. Meanwhile, Bird crowdsources ideas for an emergency arts grant while Williams attempts to fill a large pot with water (to boil the pasta). Their treadmills never stop moving.

There’s heroism in their kinetic fearlessness and zest for invention as they throw themselves into these tasks, unafraid to look ridiculous in pursuit of victory. Sure, Marina and Orlan put their bodies on the line for art way back in the ’70s, but did either of them ever serve Gatorade to the audience while they did it? (Campbell serves drinks and sells merch throughout.)

Burnout Paradise is suffused with a cheeky, very Australian sense of humor. The lights darken and we all take a collective breath for the “meditation” item on the leisure agenda. It lasts only a few seconds before the lights are violently bumped back up and the chaos resumes (brutal lighting design by Dans Maree Sheehan). And really, is that any more ludicrous that the 30-minute yoga class you dip into between taking calls from irate clients? Burnout Paradise is an artistic reflection of the little humiliations we daily suffer to participate in modernity.

Adding to the challenge, the stage of the Astor Place Theatre is much smaller than that of St. Ann’s Warehouse, where I reviewed Burnout Paradise during a brief run in 2024. No matter. Pony Cam and designer Jim Findlay have smartly condensed their set, adding video screens throughout the house like mini jumbotrons, so even those in the cheap seats can catch the action.

On top of it all, you’re also invited to get an up-close look by joining in. Pony Cam will take all the help they can get, and it was extremely heartening at my performance to see so many New Yorkers step up to assist the runners as they tried to pull off the seemingly impossible.

That’s the kind of community spirit we need as we pass through an era in which employers demand ever-higher productivity with ever-fewer resources, expecting us to work like robots until they eventually replace us with actual robots. Burnout Paradise is a shrewd commentary on hustle culture and a contemporary riff on the myth of John Henry. More immediately, it is a bracing demonstration of the bodily sacrifices one must make to eke out a living in the experimental theater.

Considering that New York City is ground zero for this special brand of insanity, Burnout Paradise absolutely belongs here. Even the choice of venue (the Astor Place was the decades-long home of Blue Man Group) is a bold statement of ambition from this hungry young troupe. I hope it run for years—if only so its original creators can stop running for their lives.