Where else on earth can you get special preview pricing for an awesome new production, and possibly win a new treadmill? The Astor Place Theatre Box Office, that’s where. 

The hilarious global hit Burnout Paradise, which landed on our Best Of List for 2024, has announced a special, in-person giveaway event on Thursday, February 12 from 12-4pm at the famed Astor Place Theatre Box Office.  All preview tickets will be available for an endorphin pumping $26.20 and one lucky purchaser will walk (or run) away with a free, brand-new Echelon Stride 6s Auto-Fold Treadmill (valued at $1999.99), in addition to other on-site giveaways – including gift cards for free lemonade at Raising Cane’s.

The special ticket price applies exclusively to preview performances running February 18 – March 4 and is available in person only, while supplies last or until the Box Office closes at 4:00 PM. Tickets are limited to two per person, with seating based on availability at the discretion of the Box Office. The treadmill winner will be randomly selected from eligible entrants, and shipping will be coordinated directly with the winner.

Created and performed by the award-winning Australian theater collective Pony Cam, the show begins previews on February 18, and opening night is set for March 5, 2026, for a limited engagement through June 28, 2026. Tickets are on sale at burnoutparadise.com.

Five performers. Four treadmills. One chance to beat the clock. The theatrical phenomenon from award-winning Australian collective Pony Cam is taking Off-Broadway by storm. It’s a live show you’ll never forget, as the people onstage make a desperate attempt to complete a series of escalating tasks, like cooking a three-course meal and filling out a grant application... all while running on treadmills. And if they don’t complete their to-do list in one hour’s time? You can get your money back. Burnout Paradise is part comedy, part endurance feat, part theatrical explosion – but more than anything, it’s a euphoric, visceral celebration of our tendency to run full tilt towards life’s endless challenges.

Acclaimed for their experimental works that subvert well-known forms in non-traditional performance spaces, and for inviting audiences into their work in unexpected ways, Pony Cam is comprised of Claire Bird, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams. They began developing Burnout Paradise in 2024 as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival and with seasons at Sydney's Bondi Festival and Melbourne's international arts festival, RISING, prior to debuting to rave reviews at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The five-star reviews there included The Scotsman, who deemed the show “magnificently chaotic, breathlessly frenetic fun.” Time Out declared it to be “one of the most uproarious shows you will ever experience… unravelling wildly differently every night…sheer bedlam in the most magnificent way.” After catching it at the Fringe, the renowned St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn programmed the show into their season five weeks later, in November 2024. 

The production is produced by No Guarantees. 

See who will be joining Adrien Brody when The Fear of 13 heads to Broadway this spring. 

Besides Brody and Tessa Thompson, the company will include Tony Award nominee Ephraim Sykes (Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations), Michael Cavinder (Annie at the Hollywood Bowl), Eddie Cooper (Dead Outlaw), Victor Cruz (“Blue Bloods”), Eboni Flowers (Eureka Day), Joel Marsh Garland (“Orange Is the New Black”), Jared Wayne Gladly (Aladdin), Joe Joseph (English), Jeb Kreager (“Mare of Easttown”), and Ben Thompson (Waitress). 

The new play by Lindsey Ferrentino will being previews at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Thursday, March 19, 2026 with an official opening night set for April 15. David Cromer is set to direct. 

The Fear of 13 tells the extraordinary true story of Nick Yarris, who spends more than two decades on death row for a murder he insists he did not commit. Through a series of prison visits with a volunteer named Jacki, Nick traces a life shaped by impulse and consequence. As Nick and Jacki’s conversations deepen, the line between witness and participant blurs, forcing both to confront what justice demands, what belief requires, and the perilous distance between true freedom and the illusion of self determination. By turns devastating, darkly funny, and life-affirming, The Fear of 13 is a powerful exploration of truth and trust, conscience and connection. 

The play had its world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in London. The original production was directed by Justin Martin. 

The creative team includes Arnulfo Maldonado (scenic design), Sarah Laux (costume design), Heather Gilbert (lighting design), Lee Kinney (sound design), Rob Pickens & Katie Gell (hair, wig, & makeup design), Bryan Carter (music supervisor and arranger), Gigi Buffington (voice, text and dialect coach), Rocio Mendez & Dave Anzuelo (fight and intimacy director), Neal Gupta (associate director), Nick Yarris (story consultant), Caparelliotis Casting (casting), Juniper Street Productions (production management), Richard Hodge (production stage manager), and James Viggiano (company manager).

As two youthful, snarky theater fans first discovering the idiosyncrasies of the New York landscape, myself and a comedian friend used to dream of staging a parody at the People’s Improv Theatre titled, “The Assembled Parties Gather at the Country Cottage Lakeside Family Home.” Or, something along those lines. (Okay, the title needed work.)

Set at a lakeside cottage in the country, our magnum opus would have featured multiple overlapping family reunions, all fraught with tensions as secrets rose concurrently to the surface, each interrupted only by roof pieces occasionally crashing down onto the nonplussed, tidily-dressed relatives. (“This place is falling apart!” a passing Blythe Danner would occasionally declare, before scuttling back off stage.) 

The idea might sound mean-spirited, but in truth, me and my co-writer loved nothing more than a good country-home-fracas drama—particularly the finest Manhattan Theatre Club vintage. Sure, we feared the milquetoast family drama’s role in the dearth of formally ambitious work on Broadway. But all things being well-balanced, can’t there be room for both? To this day, I still love a good second-home-showdown. 

So I certainly enjoyed decent chunks of The Disappear, Erica Schmidt’s routine if energetic entry into the country house canon. Now at the Minetta Lane Theatre through February 22 in an Audible production, Schmidt’s new work (which she also directs) concerns an egotistical filmmaker, Benjamin Braxton (Hamish Linklater), blowing up a longtime marriage to celebrated novelist Mira Blair (Miriam Silverman) with his pursuit of hot young star Julie Wells (Madeline Brewer). Even as their relationship crumbles, Ben and Mira are forced to work together after Benjamin’s lead actor Raf Night (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) takes a liking to Mira. 

The Disappear kicks off with Benjamin hurling misanthropic, misogynistic abuse at his poor wife—”I look at you and I see my death,” is one choice line—and stays in that lane for much of the ensuing two hour runtime. Linklater is a faultlessly committed actor, and does not shy away from his character’s cruelty. (Halley Feiffer’s stinging drama The Pain of My Belligerence utilized Linklater similarly back in 2019, if to more intriguing ends.) Linklater is also unfailingly charismatic, and in a handful of tantalizing moments, his Benjamin starts to convince—if only for a few seconds—that Mira is somehow the real problem in this dynamic. Still, the role is beneath Linklater, as Benjamin ultimately has no depths to plumb. He is a manchild, and that’s all. 

As his novelist wife, Silverman feels similarly overqualified for the gig. She mostly plays Mira as a wet rag, hapless and weak—that’s what Schmidt wrote, and it’s clearly what she wants from Silverman. It’s also quite uninteresting. 

The supporting players fare better. Dylan Baker, always reliable, hams it up delightfully as Benjamin’s put upon agent. Brewer is highly enjoyable as Julie, finding a wackiness that livens up the proceedings (the young starlet keeps slipping in and out of a fake British accent, a fun touch). And the underrated Kelvin Harrison Jr. has presence to spare as Raf, who is amusingly irritated by Benjamin and his “tortured genius” routine. 

Schmidt moves the action along briskly, but aside from little touches here and there, The Disappear never surprises. You keep waiting for the text to pull us in some unexpected direction—surely an off-beat artist like Schmidt wouldn’t write a stock country-house-fracas, just two hours of rich people yelling about nothing? But she has, reawakening my wilted dreams of ham-fisted theatrical satire in the process. Does The PIT have any openings coming up?

The Disappear is now in performance at Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.