Sheffield Theatres are on something of a roll when it comes to producing shows that collect armfuls of awards and enjoy successful transfers. Only a couple of weeks ago their smash hit Everyone’s Talking about Jamie returned to the Empire as part of its second UK tour, while their Standing At The Sky’s Edge is currently wowing audiences in the West End.
While both of those shows are musicals, the latter on a truly epic scale, Life of Pi is equally spectacular while being a piece of drama with a much more intimate feel. The spectacle here comes from the manner in which Yann Martel’s novel is interpreted for the stage in this adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti.
The publicity for the show says “You’ve read, the book, you’ve seen the film…” and the fact that much of the play’s audience will have done one or both of these certainly sets a challenge for the creative team. The novel is a sweeping odyssey of a work, full of rich descriptive writing that fills the mind with images, and Ang Lee’s film version uses extraordinary technology to bring the story vividly to life.
What Chakrabarti has done here is to tell a narrative that explores more of the material in the book, making fewer cuts to the framing scenes in the hospital and the back story in Pondicherry, but using state-of-the-art puppetry and richly lit staging to create the expected visual impact.
Piscine ‘Pi’ Patel grows up at the family zoo in Pondicherry, but when India is plunged into a period of civil and political unrest in the 1970s, his father decides to uproot the entire family, along with the animals, and head to Canada. On the ill fated sea voyage almost everyone is apparently lost, except for Pi and a handful of the animals. So it happens that he ends up adrift on a small lifeboat with a ravenous Bengal tiger (inadvertently named Richard Parker) who devours the rest of the surviving menagerie and forms an unlikely friendship with Pi.
Chakrabarti’s adaptation makes more mileage of the extended scenes in the Mexican hospital where Pi recounts his story after his eventual rescue. The authorities trying to get to the truth of the shipwreck are perplexed by Pi’s telling of the tale, in which he appears to use animals as an allegory for the more human horrors that possibly really took place. This makes the beginning of the first act rather more wordy than the faster pace of the film version, but it allows the story time to breathe, and helps the audience absorb the complex nature of what we are being told.
In what turns out to be a quite extraordinary professional stage debut, Divesh Subaskaran plays the central human character with tremendous sensitivity and focus. It is testament to his performance that we are always drawn back to him despite his being frequently surrounded by a visual spectacle that it is hard to take our eyes from. The large team of puppeteers are both clearly in view but simultaneously and magically invisible due to the truly stunning puppets designed and directed by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes, who between them have brought plays such as War Horse, Angels in America and His Dark Materials to life on stage. Watching a life-size tiger devour a goat and fight with a zebra and an orang-utan, and totally believing it, is something to behold.
Max Webster directs a very fine ensemble cast and holds the complex, layered narrative together with great precision, creating a really compelling reading of Martel’s philosophical tale.
A master of creating designs that can transform a stage into many things, Tim Hatley’s set is a chameleon that is constantly being recoloured and re-dressed by Andrzej Goulding’s video projections and sumptuous lighting from Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling.
Life of Pi is both a powerful piece of storytelling and a visual experience that easily surpasses Hollywood’s technical prowess in creating lifelike depictions of a large cast of animals. This is its first UK and Ireland tour since it garnered a host of awards, including five Olivier’s, and enjoyed an almost 15 month run in the West End.
It runs at the Liverpool Empire until Saturday 4th May, before continuing its tour, with a further eight venues currently booking through to July.
Star Rating: 4½ stars
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| Divesh Subaskaran as Pi, with 'Richard Parker' - Production photography by Johann Persson |
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| The cast of Life of Pi |
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