The main ingredient in this dish is the apple, with all its connotations. Eve tempted Adam with the crimson orb, and the pair were tossed out of paradise; an apple bonked Newton on the head, prompting his discovery of a fundamental law of physics. In 7 Fingers, it launches the company into an exploration of gravity, space, and relationships -- even love. Tempting an audience member with the fruit, performer Gypsy Snider says, "Once you eat the apple, it will never be the same again." Setting aside basic grammar, you can decide if the "it" is the apple, the "you," or the performance.
The nearly two-hour, intermissionless show contains 13 main acts that reveal the lives of four women and three men who live in an expansive loft. Like most roommates, they fight, bond, complain about loud music, and walk around in their underwear. Unlike most roommates, they also execute circus routines.
The hilarious Patrick Leonard portrays the innocent clown derived from European commedia rather than the Ringling Bros.-style clown well known in the United States. He speaks a mix of French and English and looks like a child, with tousled hair and baggy-whities. Upon discovering a staircase-shaped cushion, he throws himself on it, flips forward and backward on it, and even misses it on occasion. In another bit, Isabelle Chasse wraps herself elaborately around a vertical sheet of red cloth, twisting and turning and striking various poses; if it weren't for the fabric entwined around her ankles, she would fall to the ground. Shana Carroll's exhilarating routine on the swinging trapeze and Faon Shane's gravity-defying feat on vertical chains are especially worthy of the price of admission.
The non-aerial acts are just as breathtaking. Leonard and Sébastien Soldevila manipulate diabolos (like yo-yos maneuvered with strings attached to sticks), tossing them high into the air, catching them, and rotating them around their bodies in a dazzling piece. As a temptress, Snider (whose mother helped start the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco) juggles a knife and catches it in the crook of her knee. Chasse contorts herself on the stage, illuminated only by small lights affixed to her body, creating a beautiful study in the human form. And the mesmerizing Samuel Tetreault balances with his hands on canes, slowly pulling himself into a handstand, lifting one hand into the air, then shifting into another equally strenuous position.
But 7 Fingers isn't merely a series of circus acts. It also incorporates modern dance, with lifts, leaps, and counterbalances that reveal some intimacy between the characters. A comedic skit involving lampshades illuminates themes of jealousy and envy, while Tetreault's recitation of a melodramatic poem illustrates his vulnerability. Though the show doesn't tell one single story -- it doesn't have the narrative arc of a standard play -- through its progression the troupe members become people we all know: roommates like any other, with all their idiosyncrasies and dramas.
These ingenious performances take place within a happily curious set enhanced with special effects. Set Designer André Labbé whimsically suggests a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room using representative items such as a miniature fridge and stove, a claw-foot tub with shower, a platform bed, a TV, and racks of shoes. Some characters enter the stage through the fridge; others lounge in the tub. The scenery even includes a DJ (DJ Pocket) and his turntables. Also the music director, DJ Pocket incorporates tunes and scratching into the show; his human beat-box bit rocks, too. (Erich Kory is credited for original music as well.) Video Designer Olivier Tetreault (Samuel's brother) integrates extraordinary images -- which appear on a screen over the stage -- into the program. Here's how it works: A cameraman onstage catches the acts on film and projects some of them in real time and some in delayed time. A character might appear to enter the stage more than once; Carroll's swinging trapeze, for example, is broadcast as she performs it, whereas a scene that one of the onstage characters had abandoned gets completed on-screen. Even the roommates' onstage fights are caught on film for our voyeuristic pleasure.
Uh-oh. Is this effect a hint of reality TV?
In fact, it's a hint of plain old reality. The members of Les 7 Doigts de la Main live and work together in a converted nunnery in Montreal. As a result, 7 Fingers confuses our concepts of realism and blows away the artifice of performance. Are we watching the troupe as they are at home? Who creates the show, and when does it end? These questions form a delicious diversion, and though the show would still be delightful without that diversion, it deepens the effect.
In the end, 7 Fingers isn't spectacle circus like Cirque du Soleil (in which several "doigts" have appeared), but the level of difficulty is damn close, and the space's intimacy makes you feel like you're part of the show. Go ahead, bite the big apple.
