Review: PASSENGERS at American Repertory Theater's Loeb Drama Center is Trip Worth Taking

Train travel has inspired music and movies, from songs like “I Thought about You,”  “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “My Baby Takes the Morning Train,” and the beloved Boston classic “Charlie on the M.T.A.” to films including “Strangers on a Train,” “The Incident,” “Girl on a Train,” and, of course, “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Now, the American Repertory Theater is presenting The 7 Fingers’ “Passengers” – an eye-popping theatrical excursion blending circus art, music, and dance and turning the very thought of public transportation from mundane to magical – in a co-production with the Montreal-based TOHU and ArtsEmerson, which previously presented “Passengers” at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre in 2019, running through September 26 at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge.

The current mounting is again written, directed, and choregraphed by Shana Carroll – co-choreographer and circus designer for the 2024 Broadway musical “Water for Elephants” – who also provides lyrics for music director and composer Colin Gagné’s evocative score. The production’s circus elements hearken more to the 7 Fingers’ fellow Canadian troupe Cirque du Soleil, with which Carroll has worked, than to the now-shuttered Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. You won’t find three rings or clowns in Cambridge, but a more intimate experience that draws the audience into the show’s range of emotions, arising from the human connections of joy, wonder, and despair that accompany life’s constant forward motion.

The multi-talented cast of “Passengers” – Victor Crépin, Eduardo De Azevedo Grillo, Isabella Diaz, Marie-Christine Fournier, Téo Le Baut, Amanda Orozco, Michael Patterson, Basile Pucek, Santiago Rivera, and Méliejade Tremblay-Bouchard – displays its considerable talents with well-executed tumbling, acrobatics, and juggling. Tremblay-Bouchard’s speedy hula hoop spinning is sensational and, in another stand-out moment among many, an improvised fabric people mover is transformed into sheer aerial straps that majestically raise company members high above the stage.

Near the end of the intermissionless, 90-minute show, Patterson, a commanding presence throughout, supports two of his peers who climb atop him. At the recent opening night performance, however, Patterson visibly struggled and even trembled as sweat poured from him. It was hard to know whether to be impressed or scared. When the trio did it a second time, the feeling of peril all but obscured the entertainment value, leaving the performer shaking and some in the audience shaken.

Ana Cappelluto’s scenic design and Camille Thibault-Bédard’s costumes are effective, if minimalist. Making greater contributions to the production are Éric Champoux’s moody lighting and Johnny Ranger’s fluid projections.

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