Life of Pi - Review of Adaptation of Martel’s Novel at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre

A seventeen-year-old Indian boy named Pi ends up on a small lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days with a Bengal tiger, a zebra, an orangutan and a hyena. He and his family were on a Japanese freighter transporting a zoo to Canada that sank and everyone perished except the aforementioned. The zebra, the orangutan and the hyena were eaten by the animals higher on the food chain and the tiger and Pi were the only ones left on the lifeboat.
That is undoubtedly a striking and unforgettable image that novelist Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi is based on and its success may be described as a story that verges on the legendary. The novel was adapted for a movie and then for the stage in London and New York and a roadshow production has reached Toronto at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.
Martel had 350 pages to describe Pi’s incredible adventures and the movie had the luxury of using animals. How do you put the animals on the stage? The answer of course is puppets manipulated expertly by puppeteers and appropriate sound bites. Life of Pi is thus, at the very least, a superb puppet show. The tiger has three handlers for its head (Fred Davis, Peter Twose and Akash Heer) and six for its heart and hind (Antony Antunes, Daisy Franks, Katie Kennedy-Rose, Aizah Khan and Mark Matthews). I give their names as a tribute for what looked like very demanding work.

Before the freighter foundered, we met the smart and lively Pi (Divesh Subaskaran) in India getting ready to travel to Canada with the zoo animals. His Father (Ameet Chana) is full of advice about life and animals, his Mother (Goldy Notay) and various people creating a lively atmosphere on the shore. There is commotion, humour and a lively atmosphere before the freighter sails away.
The ship sinks and we find Pi on a lifeboat with the animals mentioned above. The weaker animals are devoured and Pi remains with the tiger. To avoid the fate of the other passengers, he constructs a small rowboat where he is safe from the tiger. Finding food, “taming” the tiger, going hungry and blind, and hallucination are the incidents that cover his voyage across the Pacific Ocean. The voyage is also broken up with flashbacks in the hospital in Mexico where Pi ends up after being rescued. He is with the officious Mrs. Okamoto (Lilian Tsang) who is charged by Japan to find the truth about the sinking of the freighter.
Martell and Lolita Chakrabarti, the adapter of the novel for the stage, have broader interests than an incredible story. Pi is interested in religions and he tries to understand the Hindu, Muslim and Christian faiths. Mrs. Okamoto is an atheist and tells him religion is just a habit. When in despair, Pi invokes Vishnu, Mohamad and Christ and finds something positive in the different religions.
When Mrs. Okamoto expresses incredulity at his narrative, he tells her another story of a voyage across the Pacific without animals but involving cannibalism as a means of survival. In other words what is the nature of a narrative, a legend or a myth?
I credited the actors manipulating the puppets which are designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell. The latter is also the director of puppetry and movement. There is use of videos directed by Andrzej Goulding with marvelous Lighting Design by Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling.
The play is set in a hospital in Mexico, in the zoo and the ship loading dock in India and the Pacifica Ocean. It requires quick and efficient scene changes and Set Designer Tim Hatley’s wonderful work archives that with speed and effectiveness.
Life of Pi has complexity, drama, humour and presents obvious difficulties in staging and director Max Webster and his crew deserve a standing ovation for putting the whole thing together.
Life of Pi by Lolita Chakrabarti based on the novel by Yann Martel continues until October 6, 2024 at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com

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