It’s a very special delight to welcome The 7 Fingers back to The Old Globe with Duel Reality, a show that’s even more spectacular and higher-octane than last year’s hit, Passengers.

When we programmed that show in our 2023 lineup, we knew that we were asking our audience to open their hearts and minds to something we hadn’t offered before. The 7 Fingers makes a unique, hybrid form of entertainment that’s very much theatre, but also something more. It fuses circus with story, music with movement, emotion with physicality, and comedy with daredevilry. We wondered whether an audience used to narrative drama and musical theatre would welcome it. The answer we received was one word: “Wow!” In my decade in San Diego, I don’t think I ever heard that word as frequently as I did last summer. I loved it! Soon I started sneaking into the back of the house during performances, just to hear those wows live and in the moment. And while I stood there I heard more: gasps, shrieks of delight, yelps of laughter, and even more than a few shouts of “Oh my God!”

When Passengers closed, Shana Carrol, the show’s director, who also happens to be one finger out of the seven, invited me to the company’s headquarters in Montreal to see what they were working on next. What I found there knocked me out. The 7 Fingers complex on the edge of Montreal’s theatre district is a marvel. At desks and in studios, on computers and on tightrope wires, artists and technicians vibrate with creativity and imagination. Projects big and small, long-term and near, are in development, and behind every door I passed I heard whoops of joy and sighs of wonder. The place is a cross between a circus Big Top, Willy Wonka’s candy factory, and the underground bunker where Q makes outlandish new inventions for James Bond. I described it to friends as “The 007 Fingers.” I’ve never seen any place like it.

Shana sat me down in the company’s largest studio, where a few dozen others had gathered for a preview of Duel Reality. I was just a few feet from the acrobats in the show. People flew from silks directly over my head. I could hear the buzz of the juggling pins as they pierced the air. And then I heard something that truly stunned me: lines from Romeo and Juliet. Shana and her wizardly collaborators had managed to find inspiration in, of all places, the plays of Shakespeare. Reimagining the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues as a circus competition, the show worked a magic trick all its own, and gave dramatic weight to circus even as it gave extraordinary fizz to iambic pentameter. The second the performance ended, I said to Shana: “Sign us up!” Actually, that was the second second. The first second I said, “Wow!”

I look forward to deepening our relationship with this powerful and innovative company, and to learning more about this ancient and yet somehow modern art form from the expert group of international performers who have come to San Diego to bless us with their talents. And I look forward to the whoops and hollers of our audience, as they boggle at a show that’s as fresh and singular as any we’ve had on our stage.

Thanks for coming. Enjoy the show.

Barry Edelstein is the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director of The Old Globe.

Any feedback on tonight's show or any of the Globe's work?

Email Barry at HiBarry@TheOldGlobe.org and he'll get back to you!