You know the moody kid, the one hanging around at the edge of the playground at recess, the one watching all the other kids chasing each other and screaming with an enthusiasm that’s inaccessible to him? That’s who I felt like at Burnout Paradise: everybody else seemed to be having fun, but I was bored.
My argument: Despite the much-publicized “chaos” of this show, Burnout Paradise is, in fact, a very deliberately prescribed form of fun. Four performers mount four treadmills, which are marked Survival, Admin, Performance, and Leisure.
In the body of the show, there are four ten-minute sections, and, during the performance, the players rotate through these different stations, so everybody gets a whack at all of them.
On the Survival and Admin treadmills, there’s one ongoing task: on Survival, the goal is to cook and serve a three-course meal; on Admin, it’s to prepare and submit a Canada Council application — while keeping the treadmills going as fast as possible. On Performance, everybody shares an individual skill. And Leisure has a whole whiteboard full of tasks to complete, including shaving and putting on lipstick.
In my experience, this set-up promises more than it delivers. The Canada Council application is basically one joke. And Performance only pays off one out of four times. In the successful bit, Dominic Weintraub does “performance art” about his childhood memory of being lured into changing for swimming class with the offer of sugary cereal. There’s genuine suspense in watching him (discreetly) change into his Speedos without losing his footing. The other three bits fall flat.
And Leisure is fun sometimes, but basically pointless. Yes, you can get the lipstick on. Yes, it’s a mess. Who cares?
To answer that question, I guess who cares are the audience members who are helping the players out (or who are really invested in the evening’s supposed stakes). To be fair, Burnout Paradise does an excellent job of soliciting audience participation. Eventually, on opening night, folks didn’t even wait to be invited to help, the just did.
That’s great. I’m all for shared experience in real space and time. It’s increasingly rare.
But there are no real stakes. There’s a promise to refund ticket prices if the tasks aren’t completed. Yeah, okay.
And there’s no substance. You might say the evening is about the absurd pace of modern life, but that’s a stretch — that takes less than ten seconds to complete.
Still, like I said, everybody else seemed to be having a genuinely good time. The little girl in front of me was levitating. (I’d love to see this show with an audience of elementary school kids. That would be genuine chaos.) And Burnout Paradise has recently booked a six-month off-Broadway run.
Good on ‘em. But I won’t be urging my New York friends to attend.
BURNOUT PARADISE Created by Pony Cam (Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub, and Hugo Williams). Produced by Dans Maree Sheehan for Parrot Ox. At The Cultch’s Historic Theatre until December 7. (Tickets and information)
PHOTO CREDIT: William Strom, Hugo Williams, Claire Bird, and Dominic Weintraub (Photo by Darren Gill)
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