Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s 2001 Booker Prize-winning novel, is both a fantastical story of survival and a philosophical study of faith and spirituality, life and death. Ang Lee’s 2012 film adaptation received a clutch of Oscars and in 2019, Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation for the stage maintained the winning record with five Olivier Awards. This first UK touring production is currently midway through an extensive 34-venue run.
Piscine “Pi” Patel (Divesh Subaskaran) is a 17-year-old living in Pondicherry, India in the 1970s and in the unusual surroundings of a zoo run by his father. Pi is a rather whimsical boy, curious about religion and who decides to follow three faiths (Hinduism, Islam and Christianity) as he “just wants to follow God”. Pi and his sister Rani (Keshini Misha) receive a sobering lesson in the brutality of nature when Father (Ralph Birtwell) feeds the family’s pet goat to the zoo’s new attraction, Richard Parker, a magnificent Bengal tiger.
As tensions in India increase, the family pack up the zoo—including the animals—and board a cargo ship for Canada and a better life. A storm and a shipwreck leave Pi seemingly the only survivor on a lifeboat until he is joined by a zebra, orangutan and hyena escaping the turbulent ocean. Horror then ensues as Richard Parker manages to climb aboard and it is then a question of survival, not just of the shipwreck but keeping out of the way of a hungry tiger.
This story is told through contrasting scenes—the sterility of a Mexican hospital room where a traumatised Pi recounts his story to the insurance company and accident investigator, the vibrancy and colours of Pi’s Indian home and the huge expanse of ocean as Pi is at sea for 227 days.
Projection (Andrzej Goulding), lighting design (Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling), set design (Tim Hatley) and puppetry (design by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes) all combine to evoke the challenging changes in setting. India’s heat, lush vegetation and busy marketplace suddenly switch to the no-frills cargo ship, chaos of the storm and loneliness of the lifeboat drifting on the waves. Visually, this is hugely impressive.
The impressionistic puppets—their frame and musculature inspired by driftwood rather than an accurate representation of the varied proportions of the lifeboat’s inhabitants—are mesmerising to watch, particularly Richard Parker, his snorts, growls and grunts keeping things tense.
On stage for almost the whole production, Pi and his various dilemmas are central to this story and Subaskaran shows his bewilderment, despair and humour with sensitivity and charm. His is a story of perseverance and overcoming adversity; he faces many challenges to his faith, not least as a vegetarian facing the prospect of having to kill and eat meat to survive.
Chakrabarti’s main focus is on telling Pi’s story of survival, and not anthropomorphising the stranded animals—these are wild, dangerous and hungry creatures. There is a tendency towards “telling” in places, plus the over-explanation of events towards the end of the play is not needed.
At this performance, the audience was dominated by what appeared to be year 10 and 11 students and, reinforced by the education packs available on the tour’s web site, this production provides many rich learning opportunities for schools. And what a great theatrical experience for these students, and anyone looking to see such a sensorially vivid production.