A detachment of Black Watch (choreographer Steven Hoggett and performers Ryan Fletcher and Henry Pettigrew of Scotland’s gifted Frantic Assembly theater company) is back with another hypnotic, dance-driven tale of pugilists in pitched battle with themselves. This time it's a group of small-time Glaswegian boxers, led by trainer Bobby Burgess (Ewan Stewart), a drill-sergeant from the I-Am-God school of athletic leadership. He's got a promising pupil in Cameron Burns (Fletcher), but is the kid ready for a matchup with flashy champ Ajay Chopra (Taqi Nazeer), a natural banished from Burgess's tutelage after a racially tinged battle of wills? More or less front to back, the show is a flawlessly choreographed flow of fight-dancing, flash-cut with film-appropriated (yet totally theater-appropriate) visual dynamics, all set to thumping techno at Crunchesque decibel levels. Just watching these bodies in motion is good for a few hundred Weight Watchers points: Beautiful Burnout is hardly a relaxing night at the theater, but who wants that, anyway?
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