Puppets, projections, and a charming twunk will captivate ‘Life of Pi’ audiences
The Lion King may no longer rule Broadway’s puppet kingdom with the arrival of Life of Pi, Lolita Chakrabarti’s visually stunning adaptation of the best-selling novel by Yann Martel.Originating at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre and then transferring to London’s West End where it won five Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, Life of Pi manages to accomplish the magical by entertaining audiences of all ages with innovative stage design and a more complex narrative about surviving trauma, which is all too familiar for the queer community.Pi (a charismatic Hiram Abeysekera reprising his Olivier-winning performance) is a precocious teenager whose family flees Pondicherry, India, in the mid-70s due to increased violence.
They flee the country aboard a Japanese cargo ship, with many of the family’s zoo animals in tow, but when rough waters capsize the vessel, Pi finds himself the sole human survivor on a lifeboat, along with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and Bengal tiger.But things may not be exactly as they seem as Pi recalls his hundreds of days at sea to Canadian consulate and Japanese Ministry of Transport representatives from a Mexican hospital where he is recovering.It is this ever-shifting illusion of reality that captivates Pi’s story of endurance that provoked tears of joy and sorrow from the audience member sitting next to me, who exclaimed during intermission, “I’m happy it’s so Indian,” also commending the pronunciation of the Hindu prayer (puja).Broadway sees far too little Indian representation — 2004’s Bombay Dreams (284 performances) and the 2009 production of Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (108 performances) are among the few, while a reworked revival of The Secret Garden with more authentic.
