Hi Dan,
I have exactly the same problem…
And even stranger, the memory usage online is different than the one locally.
Masuga had also something similar: https://twitter.com/vicrau/status/226695944702418944
One thing I notice in the profiler, I’ve placed a copy here:
http://www.vicrau.be/template_debugging.html
It starts at 11MB and it really jumps up here and that’s even for pages not using playa.
(0.041128 / 16.13MB) -> Method Called: entries
(0.084092 / 21.71MB) Calling Extension Class/Method: Playa_ext/channel_entries_tagdata
I know my post is a bit similar to the previous ones above, but you never know 😊
regards
Vic