Stage/Theatre

What: 3 Fingers Back
Where: Tarragon Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave.
When: Now, until Sun., March 24
Highlight: A striking set that takes full advantage of levels
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Heart-wrenching performances from Megan Legesse and Uche Ama

WOULD YOU hold up under torture? How long would you let someone stretch your fingers back, inch by inch, before you break?

3 Fingers Back, a 54ology double bill co-produced by Tarragon Theatre and lemonTree creations, is a snapshot of how humans treat each other in these moments of cruelty. Featuring two plays directed by co-directors Yvette Nolan and Cole Alvis, Give It Up chronicles two women kept in a small prison cell who belong to a radical movement. Consequently, The Smell of Horses retells the same story through the eyes of the guards and commander outside their cell, providing a panoramic view of this one specific story. Donna-Michelle St. Bernard blends histories of the Angolans and Guineans, her writing is sweet prose to the ears and delivers pressure-cooker scenes that come to a pop.

Set designer César El Hayeck transforms the Tarragon Extraspace into a visually appetizing rendition of a prison that thoughtfully creates a world for both of these plays. On the left of the stage is a raised platform, the office of the guards and commander. On the right, at ground level, is the small five-by-five-foot prison cell in which the two women are kept, complete with spaced-out prison bars so that the audience can be privy to the action inside.

The first play, Give It Up, follows Ada and Yol, who each have a corner of the box to which they would often retreat, a psychological boxing match between two people who are supposed to be on the same side. It’s a tiny playing space, but it never feels monotonous as the women embody physically the psychological horror of being trapped and tortured as someone assigned female at birth. Ada (Megan Legesse) has a wonderfully haunting quality while Yol (Uche Ama) carries strength and a sense of yearning; both actresses were pitch perfect in their embodiment of fortitude and pain.

At points in the piece, the women are able to “escape” from their cell through episodes of chanting and movement accompanied by a beautiful blue light (contrasting the increasingly intense orange light of their cell). Aria Evans, associate director, takes great care in making movement a driving force in these stories. The use of African dance styles is embedded into these moments, gestures that create a cohesive movement vocabulary between characters and worlds.

While Saad (Tsholo Khalema) has the most power in Give It Up, there is a shift of power that happens where he is the guard the lowest on the totem pole, compared to his superiors Beech (Indrit Kasapi) and Adam (Christopher Bautista) in The Smell of Horses. Adam cracks jokes in between interrogations and the audience laughs along. There is something so interesting about how quickly we, the audience, are willing to laugh along with a torturer, how swift we are to participate in the casual cruelty.

In comparison to the intensity of the first piece, the second of the duology falls flat in its slower pacing and not quite life-or-death stakes for its characters. It’s certainly interesting to get a look at the world outside the prison bars, but it loses its lustre after such a powerful first act.

3 Fingers Back first and foremost gives us a snapshot of a particular time and place in space, the first play of the duology alone being reason enough to go out and see it. One of the chants that the prisoners have is “I will witness and be witnessed” and that is exactly what this piece invites the audience to do — simply let yourself be a witness to the unseen.