When Opray Winfrey named Yann Martel’s Life of Pi to her book club list in 2001, I did not read it (I have many issues with Winfrey and run 180 degrees from most things associated with her). When Ang Lee directed an Academy Award nominated movie adaptation of the book in 2012, I was team Argo and missed it again (probably still not overlooking Winfrey’s connection to it). So I went to the Kennedy Center last night knowing little more about the 2023 Tony Award Best Play nominee I was about to see other than what sounds like a set-up for a Borscht Belt comic’s joke: There’s an Indian lad and a tiger on a boat, . What I saw on stage was a fantasy world beyond an Indian lad and a tiger on a boat. Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Martel’s novel, under Max Webster’s stylized direction (protected by tour director Ashley Brooke Monroe) is a visually stunning and moving interpretation that adds many new layers onto Martel’s philosophical, existential tale with almost poetic action through a cast of beautifully articulated puppets.
Starting in a hospital in Mexico in 1977, an insurance adjuster is trying to interview a traumatized 17-year-old sole survivor of a Japanese tanker shipwreck. The boy, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel (named by his mother for the famous Parisian swimming pool, he shortened the moniker to avoid ridicule by his school chums, who pronounced it “pissing”), whose family owned a zoo in Pondicherry, India, relates a fantastical tale of his journey to survival which takes significant side excursions through the spiritual and metaphysical worlds in the process.
Raised by an esoteric mother, who taught him to love and appreciate the animals in their zoo, and a realistic father, who made him painfully aware of the food chain his wife was romanticizing for the children, Pi’s life was for the most part idyllic in their controlled animal paradise. But when world events intervene and Prime Minister Indira Ghandi declares “The Emergency”, Pi’s father packs the family and the animals on a Japanese freighter bound for Canada. En route, the ship encounters a dangerous storm. As the boat is sinking, Pi is thrown aboard on a lifeboat as his only chance to survive. He soon finds he shares said boat with some of his old friends from the zoo: Orange Juice, an orangutan who had recently become a mother, Black and White, a zebra injured in the transfer, and a hideous, vicious hyena—not to mention the zoos prize Bengal tiger Richard Parker (named for a slip up in his interment paperwork, where the captor, Richard Parker, accidentally placed his name in the “animal’s name” spot and Pi’s father kept it as a joke). When the food chain and the circle of life plays out in a interspecies game of “Survivor” on the cramped confines of the boat, Richard Parker and Pi emerge as final two. Not fully trusting the regal beast, Pi constructs a makeshift raft to attach to the boat as the two enter an arrangement to co-exist in peace and mutual dependence.
The details of the story and lessons learned along the way are better left experienced than explained, and even then take a silver medal to the beautiful way the play unfolds. In the vein of venerable predecessors Warhorse and The Lion King, the animals are portrayed with Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell’s highly stylized yet somehow incredibly lifelike puppets operated by a crew of well-trained puppeteers under Finn’s admirable puppetry and movement direction. While one is slightly more aware of the puppeteers inside and around the creatures in this production, the effect is no less fluid, captivating, and effective. The bulk of the two hour experience are two-player scenes between Pi and Richard Parker, and it loses none of the beauty, reverence, fear, or intensity of the imagination in the book or the CGI of the movie.
At this performance, Savidu Geevaratne as Pi was an engrossing narrator, a vivacious force who took physical charge of his surroundings whether rooted in reality in the hospital or in the imagination of his story in the South Pacific Ocean, he is thoroughly convincing and mesmerizing, never losing our focus even when competing with the astonishing artistry created around him. He rarely leaves the stage the entire production save for a handful of brief costume or setting changes, and his energy never wavers from his appearance in the hospital room to the final curtain.
Adding to the visual magic is the accomplished production team assembled by Webster to enhance his storytelling. Scenic and Costume Designer Tim Hatley starts with a serviceable and wisely basic canvas which become a giant sized Light Bright set for flawless Video and Animation Designs by Andrzej Goulding and powerful Lighting Design by Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling. These smartly integrated features overlaying Barnes & Caldwell’s evocative puppets and Geevaratne’s endearing and enlightening performance makes the evening a simply breathtaking experience from the moment the zoo materializes till the final bows. To even try to describe anything in further detail would not only spoil some important moments but do none of their accomplishments justice. The best I can say is The Life of Pi under Max Webster’s prolific guidance is a sum greater than any of its parts, a master class in multimedia live storytelling in gargantuan proportions. It is not just a play, but more of a collaborative piece of performance art. The entire team from actors to ensemble to designers and directors have achieved a next-level experience that should not be missed. The beauty of the book is the way the imagination conjures up this story in our minds. Webster and company do an equally creative job, acting like the most effective of Cliff’s Notes to jumpstart our understanding of the piece.
In the process we explore valuable lessons about the balance of nature, and how we must learn to co-exist, both commanding and paying respect to the various species with we share this planet, as well as the dichotomy that exists in doing so. A creature that is dangerous can be beautiful, and one that is feared may learn to be trusted. One need not be an “animal person” to appreciate the lessons in the bonds between humans and animals in this engrossing journey of survival, despair, and, eventually, hope.
In the final moments of the story, the adjuster throws his hands up, finding Pi the most undependable historian of his fantastical account of what happens. To appease him, he offers the officer an alternate version that basically covers the events in a more realistic, more probable, but highly gruesome and revolting manor and offers the agent his choice. This coincides with Martel’s statements about his tale. He says the adventure can be summarized by three simple statements:
- Life is a story.
- You can choose your story
- A story with God is the better story.
I’d like to add a fourth option: A story with God told in the sublime surroundings of the Kennedy Center is the best of all worlds. It’s a lovely place to be stranded for 2-plus hours.
Photos courtesy of Evan Zimmerman
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes with one intermission.
Life of Pi currently plays through January 5, 2025, at the Eisenhower Theatre at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington DC 20566. For tickets, call the box office at 202.467.4600 or purchase online