Live and in person at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto, Ont. playing until Oct. 6, 2024.
Based on the novel by Yann Martel
Adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti
Directed by Max Webster
Set and costumes by Tim Hatley
Lighting by Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling
Sound by Carolyn Downing
Composer, Andrew T. Mackay
Video design by Andrzej Goulding
Puppetry and movement by Finn Caldwell
Puppet design by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell
Cast: Divesh Subaskaran
Kazeem Tosin Amore
Antony Antunes
Bhawna Bhawsar
Ameet Chana
Fred Davis
Daisy Franks
Akash Heer
Katie Kennedy-Rose
Aizah Khan
Chand Martinez
Mohit Mathur
Mark Matthews
Goldy Notay
Riya Rajeev
Kate Rowsell
Lilian Tsang
Peter Twose
Vinesh Veerasami
A stunning and magical theatrical rendering of Yann Martel’s celebrated book about story-telling, imagination, savagery, humanity, faith, belief, and the truth.
The Story. It starts in 1978, in Mexico in a hospital room. Piscine Patel is 17-years-old. He is the lone survivor of a shipwreck in which his family and all the other people on the ship perished. He survived 227 days on a lifeboat, often without food and water, and investigators for the shipping line want to know what happened. Patel then begins to weave the many and various stories that have brought him to this place. He begins with his name. Because cruel schoolmates deliberately mispronounced his first name to sound like an insult, Patel changed his name to “Pi.”
NOTE: FROM WIKIPEDIA: “The number π; spelled out as “pi” is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle‘s circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers. 227 Consequently, its decimal representation never ends, nor enters a permanently repeating pattern.”
Pi is a perfect name (metaphor?) for Pi Patel because on one level his never-ending stories seem irrational, fantastical and are never repeated, just like an ‘irrational number.’
The Production. Director Max Webster’s production is inventive and eye-popping in its creativity. There is a constant swirl of seamless activity as the story shifts from Pi in the hospital room telling his story, and then back to the past, where the story is enacted.
It begins in India where Pi lives happily with his parents and sister. His father is the manager of a zoo and some of the animals are: a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and the prize among them is a huge, forbidding Bengal tiger.
All the animals and later fish and a turtle are portrayed by puppets. Kudos to Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell who are the puppet designers and Finn Caldwell for the puppetry and movement. Puppeteers manipulate and maneuver the puppets around the stage in lifelike movement. With respect to the tiger a puppeteer is inside the structure manipulating the front legs with others maneuvering the back legs, while another might operate the tail. Each puppet has its distinctive movement and ‘personality.’ The audience has a good chance of observing how the puppeteers create the movement and actions of each animal until they just forget those people are there and what they are really looking at are a live hyena, zebra, orangutan and Bengal tiger on stage.
As Pi, Divesh Subaskaran gives a towering performance for this complex character. Pi is a boyish, inquisitive 17-year-old. He is curious about the world and in particular the existence of God, to the point that he looks not only to his Hinduism for signs of God’s existence, but also investigates Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism for ways that those religions believe as well. He quietly notes that to pay respects to those religions he goes to church, the mosque, the synagogue and temple to worship daily. Interestingly, when Pi is suffering horribly from thirst and hunger over those 227 days at sea, he prays to God (no other name) for solace and hope.
In both the hospital and negotiating the small lifeboat at sea, Divesh Subaskaran is agile, athletic and almost balletic. He is joined on the boat by the hyena, zebra, orangutan, and suddenly from beneath a tarpaulin, the fearsome Bengal Tiger. Negotiating space with what might be called savage animals requires all of Pi’s wily intelligence and humanity. Eventually, there is only Pi and the forbidding tiger.
Designer Tim Hatley’s set is both simple and efficient. When the storm comes that capsizes the ship on which Pi and his family and the animals are travelling, the ‘walls’ of the ship are rolled away and other parts are slid on to form the lifeboat that is bobbing precariously in the choppy sea along with Pi and the terrified and terrifying animals. Andrew T. Mackay’s video design of a swirling sea and pelting rain are evocative of the challenges that Pi endures.
When the scenes return to the hospital room and Pi weaves his stories, they take on a mystical aura. While he does not discuss the existence of God directly, there is a discussion of believing in something one can’t see. He questions the investigators about his stories, their belief in them and references to faith. And finally, when the investigators need and want to know what really happened at sea, on that boat, Pi gives them two stories to ponder. One is of jaw dropping savagery and the other is a kind of humanity, and deciding which is which is not cut and dried or what you expect.
The Life of Pi is an eloquent and elegant metaphor. Lolita Chakrabarti has taken Yann Martel’s stunning book and adapted it for the stage with sensitivity, muscularity and breathtaking poetry.
Comment. The Life of Pi is a complex, challenging story of faith, tenacity, cherishing life in all forms and resilience. It is also a dazzling piece of theatre that grabs the imagination and never lets go even until the final, stunning and moving moment.
Mirvish Productions present:
Plays until Oct. 6, 2024.
Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes (1 intermission)