Under expert direction by Max Webster, a team of creative juggernauts - Tim Hatley (scenic and costume design), Andrzej Goulding (video design and animation), Tim Lutkin (lighting design), Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell (puppet design), Carolyn Downing (sound design) - liven the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. As his memories play out before us, the back walls of the hospital unfold into the vibrant streets of Pondicherry, where we learn Pi and his family operated a zoo. The Noah’s Ark of it all boggles the inflexible minds of Chen and Okamoto, who are set on recording facts about the wreck, not listening to Pi’s “unbelievable” recounts. Especially when, according to Pi, that time was spent on a lifeboat with an anxious orangutan, a crippled zebra, an insatiable hyena and a ferocious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all of which were cargo on the same now-sunken ship. But 227 days abandoned at sea (as we find out Pi has endured) laughs in the face of 17 years on land. “I’ve had a terrible trip,” Abeysekera delivers with an arid sarcasm that seems unlikely for a teenage boy. The two want to know what led to the sinking of the ship Tsimtsum on its journey from India to Canada a crash which killed everyone on board except for Pi, including his family. ![]() Okamoto (Daisuke Tsuji) and Canadian Embassy worker Lulu Chen (Kirstin Louie). “Life of Pi” begins with our boyish hero (Hiran Abeysekera) in a Mexican hospital room circa 1978, hiding from Japanese Ministry of Transport investigator Mr. Neither is Chakrabarti in a brilliantly-staged dramedy that constantly blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Pi is not afraid to hold seemingly opposite logics and faiths in the same hand. And Pi wants that voice to answer his questions about human suffering before he has even experienced his extreme bout of it. During a moment of crisis he cries out “Vishnu preserve us, Allah protect us, Christ save us.” At only 17, Pi - born Piscine Molitor Patel - knows that God’s name matters less than his voice. Case in point, Pi is Hindu, but also goes to church and mosque on the weekends. In that book, adapted for stage by Lolita Chakrabarti, central character Pi is just as boundless as the algebraic figure he’s named after. ![]() And figuratively, because Yann Martel’s bestselling book “Life of Pi” continues to capture the hearts of readers across the globe. Literally, because the mathematical constant “pi” is a limitless irrational number.
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