Television’s Sam the Cooking Guy famously opened a joint in Little Italy called Not Not Tacos. “Well, they’re not not tacos.” Passengers, a train-based show staged by the Montreal-based troupe The 7 Fingers, is not not the circus. I mean sure, you’ve got your twirled hoops, your juggled balls, your climbing silks, your climbing straps, your climbing pole, your hanging trapeze, your dancers and acrobats, your routines and skits… But as the program informs us, the troupe’s founders “set out to redefine circus by stripping down the spectacle to its thrilling essence.”

That’s both true and not. True, there are no bright colors to distract the eye, and few gags to fill the space between routines. (There’s a reason for the somber tone and look; writer/director/choreographer Shana Carroll lost a friend and collaborator shortly after beginning work on the project.) Instead, we get songs about lovers meeting and separating, monologues about traveling in an effort to find oneself, and an extended attempt to explain Einstein’s famous “man on the train” thought experiment about the way time moves differently for bodies in motion. (That one gets punched up with jokes, thank goodness.) The props are limited mostly to suitcases, chairs, and luggage carts, with decoration served up via monochromatic train-themed projections. So yes, stripped down, so as not to distract from the genuinely breath-taking physical feats of dexterity and strength. (Reader, I gasped —repeatedly.) But also gussied up with vague intimations of significance —performative meditations on bodies in motion.

Speaking of bodies: the feeling that endured as I left the theater was something akin to awe at the glory of the bodies at work here —both the feats they achieved and the innovation and grace with which they interacted.