The splendid Montreal-based troupe of acrobats, gymnasts, dancers and circus artists known as The 7 Fingers currently makes a two-week appearance in far lower Manhattan at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, where its delightful Passengers opened on Sunday.
Passengers is a Cirque du Soleil sort of entertainment, sans that estimable company’s typically extravagant décor and themes. Less exotic in concept, more about everyday experience turning remarkable, Passengers delivers a physical theater event that expertly unwinds a string of cool, classy acrobatic episodes aimed to entertain children of all generations. Too bad Passengers can’t tarry at PAC NYC all summer long.
Inventively devised, directed and choreographed by company co-founder Shana Carroll, the mostly non-verbal Passengers involves a dozen or so strangers seemingly traveling aboard a train. As they silently jog along in the same direction, one traveler among them stands up and cheerfully starts clambering along the tops of the seats and soon is balancing lithely upon the hands of other passengers, and so their journey begins for the next 85 agreeable minutes.
Usually and fleetly moving to the rhythms of jazzy and joyful music provided by composer and musical director Colin Gagné along with familiar standards such as “You Do Something to Me,” the artists zip through a wide range of circus and athletic feats. Among the many skills on elegant display here are tip-top performances of tumbling, juggling, acrobatics, contortion, hula-hooping and hoop-diving, as well as remarkable variations on aerial and trapeze artistry. Although how a thrilling trapeze act some 25 or 30 feet in the air happens to be occurring aboard a train is one of those mysteries easily overlooked in thrall to the performers’ daring artistry. (Perhaps those aerial acts occur whenever the train halts at a station? My notes are sketchy because my eyes always were riveted to the artists’ doings.)
Broadway buffs will be especially amused by a funny sequence involving a rhythmic succession of sneezes, coughs, yawns and remarks that will recall the opening moments of The Music Man.
Making Passengers so much the nicer is exquisite lighting by Éric Champoux that lends a sculptural edge to the performers’ lissome physicality, plus a usually misty stream of impressionistic visual projections designed by Johnny Ranger flowing above, below or behind them. The handsome clothes designed by Camille Thibault-Bédard comfortably suggest middle-class, middle 20th century vintage looks, and they also accommodate the mostly barefooted performers’ needs to be incredibly flexible to do their stuff. These design matters are subtleties most civilian viewers won’t register directly, but they serve to make the event succeed as a charmer.
Probably the smarter hotel concierges already have this agreeable event high on their lists to recommend to guests once they are finished visiting the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 reflecting pools, St. Paul’s churchyard, Wall Street and other downtown attractions. Locals who enjoy circus artistry will find this fleet, neat Passengers to be a genuine treat worth traveling to see.
Passengers opened June 15, 2025 at PAC NYC and continues through June 29. Tickets and information: pacnyc.org
