Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
When a character promises a life story so inspiring that it makes a believer out of an atheist, the story had better come across convincingly. Life of Pi, Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s poignant 2001 novel, premiering tonight at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, is unlikely to produce religious converts, but a renewed confidence in the art of puppetry is all but guaranteed .
With award-winning young actor Hiran Abeysekera reprising his Olivier Award-winning London performance as the title character, Max Webster’s Life of Pi stays closer to the novel than Ang Lee’s 2012 film adaptation and builds the storyline around a maritime investigation Instead of writing a book – and of course replacing CGI beasts with enough fully articulated, life-size puppets to populate a zoo, or at least a lifeboat. All on board are the occasional hyena, orangutan, zebra, the odd sea turtle, a hyena-bait water rat and, most impressive of all, a giant Bengal tiger with the improbable name of Richard Parker.
How the creatures and young Pi end up sharing a small ship adrift in the Pacific will not surprise you whether you’ve read the novel or seen the movie, and if you haven’t experienced either, Life has of Pi have an exhibition system ready and waiting. Not unlike those spiritual mysteries of the ’70s in which stigmata-covered novices (Agnes of God) and horse-blind fanatics (Equus) stunned rational conversationalists for the better part of two acts, Pi pits his open-hearted hero against a no-nonsensical investigator sent around to get to the bottom of both mysteries – why did the ship sink? – and lots of spiritual folderol.
Sonya Venugopal, Celia Mei Rubin, Hiran Abeysekera Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
“Are you a religious man, Mr. Okamoto?” the hospitalized, still traumatized Pi asks the investigator investigating the sinking of a merchant ship. “Religion,” is the answer, “is more of a habit than a truth. A crutch in times of need.”
Any bets on how quickly the skeptic will change his mind after Pi wraps up his Whopper of a Fish story?
Admittedly, it really is a story. Piscine Molitor Patel – he prefers pi – is a 17-year-old religious-seeking (albeit ecumenical) Indian boy from Pondicherry who, with his parents, sister and boxes full of animals from the family zoo, heads to Canada to join politics escape riots in India in the 1970s. When a storm sinks the ship, the mild-mannered vegetarian Pi makes his way to a lifeboat he’ll soon be sharing with some other four-legged castaways.
When the fearsome zoo creatures soon prepare each other to eat, Pi finds himself the last man to swim with the feral Richard Parker, the 450-pound jungle cat who has become one through some circus training tips Pi remembers during ghostly visits fairly peaceful coexistence is intimidated by his animal-savvy father. (Other human appearances also arrive, offering Pi some much-needed survival tips and life lessons).
As the days stretch into months and the drinking water dwindles to zero, Pi’s odds seem ever worse, his story regarding the skeptical Okamoto-san (Daisuke Tsuji) ever more outlandish. It doesn’t take long for the tiger to start talking to Pi, and that’s before things get really weird.
Nevertheless, the boy knows how to spin a great yarn. Even Broadway audiences, still tickled by the bovine Milky White of Into the Woods and the giant prehistoric creatures of Lincoln Center’s The Skin of Our Teeth, will be enchanted by the creatures of Pi, courtesy of the puppet and Motion director Finn Caldwell and his co-designer Nick Barnes.
The same goes for the work of stage and costume designer Tim Hatley, video designer Andrzej Goulding, and lighting designer Tim Lutkin (their combined Olivier Trophies could capsize a ship of your own). At one point, Pi jumps overboard and is swallowed up by the sea/stage, a bit of theatrical trick no less effective for its simplicity.
Still, the visual appeal can’t quite wash away a stacked-deck ending or convincingly speak for the imaginative over the plausible. Basically, Okamoto-san probably agrees.
Title: Life of Pi: Shipwreck with Tiger
Venue: Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater
Director: Max Webster
Written by: Lolita Chakrabarti, adapted from Yann Martel’s novel
Main actor: Hiran Abeysekera, Fred Davis, Scarlet Wilderink, Brian Thomas Abraham, Rajesh Bose, Avery Glymph, Mahira Kakkar, Kirstin Louie, Salma Qarnain, Sathya Sridharan, Daisuke Tsuji, Sonya Venugopal
Duration: 2 hours 15 minutes (incl. break)