Burnout Paradise
Ed Fringe 24
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Ed Fringe 24 -
Australian company Pony Cam seem to have set themselves the challenge of having the most exhausting month of their lives, doing a month long run in Edinburgh is knackering at the best of times, but doing it on treadmills? I can only imagine the pain.
Burnout Paradise is part game-show, part capitalist critique, part endurance theatre. Four performers are warming up on treadmills as the audience enters, each of the four machines is adorned with a label: SURVIVAL, ADMIN, PERFORMANCE, LEISURE. The layout of the show is explained to us as follows: each performer has a task to complete on their treadmills, they have ten minutes to do it then they all switch places, this happens four times, on top of this they have to run more than their current personal best (around 21km between them when I went), if they fail they’ll offer us all a refund. The tasks are batshit, I laugh out loud as they explain them, with no idea how they’ll possibly do it. One has to cook a meal, with induction hobs next to their treadmill, one writes a funding application to Arts Scotland, the laptop atop their running machine, one performs for us something they’ve come prepared with, and one works their way through a flipchart of random tasks (apply suncream, share a beer, do a lateral flow test etc). It is all coordinated by the fifth performer, who tracks progress, counts down time, and offers out berocca to anyone and everyone in the audience.
I can safely say that watching this mania unfold was some of the most fun I’ve had at the fringe this year. It brings to mind Miet Warlop’s brilliant One Song, where the actors played one song over and over again for 60 minutes whilst performing various gymnastic exercises, the double bass player doing a sit up everytime he had to hit a note, the violinist dancing on a balance beam, the singer on a treadmill. Burnout Paradise is similarly exhilarating, though it differs in that it relies heavily on its audience to succeed. It’s great watching audience members barrel down the steps onto the stage to chug some berocca, to shave the body hair of a topless runner, to help chop up a cucumber for the salad course. As a bloc, we are completely on their side, their promise of a refund does absolutely nothing to dampen our collective spirits, and I think that’s sort of the point, in order to stave off the burnout from the never-ending barrage of daily tasks we have to do, it is important to have people help you out, to build communities, to share the heavy load of existence.
As the show comes to a close, the funding application buffers for a moment on the submission page, I’m on the edge of my seat, all other tasks completed, including a three course meal served and eaten, the buffering page blinks, ‘submission successful’ flashes onto the screen and it’s like the home side have scored a goal, the audience erupting in cheers, if we were in a stadium pints of berocca would be flying through the sky.
Burnout Paradise is on at Summerhall until the 26th August (not 19th), tickets here.
FIVE STARS
