The breathtaking story in Life Of Pi tells of the wonderfully weird yet truly horrifying and gruesome adventures that befall Indian teenager, Pi, from Pondicherry, shipwrecked in a terrifying storm at sea as his family attempts to transport their zoo animals to Canada. Trapped in a small boat, he’s desperate to survive – along with an orang-utan, a zebra, a hyena and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker, all thirsty, terrified and ravenous. They can’t all make it.
Fifteen million copies of Yann Martel’s original Man Booker award-winning novel of 2002 have sold worldwide with Ang Lee’s 2012 film also a massive hit. With The Crucible’s production of Lolita Chakrabati’s exhilarating play adaptation in Sheffield in 2019 the pinnacle of theatrical perfection was truly reached in every respect, the show taking the theatre world by storm when the spectacle of Pi, trapped in a small boat – along with the animals – sat centre stage. Following West End and Broadway runs, 5 Oliviers and 3 Tonies, the show now begins its first extensive tour of the UK and Ireland, starting again in Sheffield – but this time on the more conventional stage of The Lyceum. With set, puppetry and special effects having to now repeatedly move location and adapt to myriad different stages, can the show still conjure up that same mesmerising magic?
Chakrabati’s play will always be a sure-fire winner, of course, when this fantastical, thought-provoking tale/allegory unfolds before our eyes via intense, passionate, focused acting, enhanced by beautiful stagecraft and expert puppetry. This touring version may be, inevitably, less slick, less captivating, less overwhelmingly awesome than that exceptional original production, but it’s still totally gripping and highly memorable.
Chakrabati, writing as actor as well as writer, has honoured a request from author, Yann Martel, that the animals remain realistically wild and dangerous, not fluffy and cuddly. And so they are. Richard Parker’s entrance is both breathtaking and menacing. As his Bengal tiger-head and whiskers look out at us, he is frighteningly real; convincingly realistic, too, are his movements – the padding placement of his paws, his stealthy, supple gait, his spring and pounce. The multiple busy operators of the beast’s component parts certainly know how a cat moves. In constant choreographies, other busy operators operate, too, all over the place, creating spectacles that bring life to all those animals, birds and butterflies, bring life to the storm itself as it tosses Pi and his boat high in the waves, and also to props both on land or bobbing on the waves.
Beautiful scenes have them dance beneath starlit night skies or with shoals of lithe, iridescent fish that shimmer, twist and flap, or have them unfurl parchment charts that cleverly come together to form projection screens upon which a typewriter types. While India’s zoo and market are full of bright sound and colour, projections and lighting create dark tempests of bouncing, beating, pouring rain. The impact of visual spectacle is crucial and there’s plenty.
On this epic battle of endurance, in which grim, ruthless reality boils everything down to the survival of the fittest, Divesh Subakaran takes the pivotal role as Pi, who, in his great wisdom and logic, is Hindu, Muslim and Christian all at the same time. With a confident performance in this, his professional debut, Subakaran connects well with the audience, nicely marrying emotional times of trauma and despair with cooler, rational, logical moods and beautifully comic moments, full of light humour. As scenes alternate between the stark Mexican hospital and flash-backs to India and to the terrible events on the high seas, Pi alternates narration and re-enactment as, against all the odds, but at a terrible cost, he miraculously survives. But what’s the real truth of what happened? And which truth suits us best to believe?
Warm applause and various standing ovations testify that this riveting, thought-provoking tale with the special charm and fascination of its delightful visual spectacle is still a definite winner.
For more information, tour dates and tickets follow this link.
Eileen Caiger Gray.
