Theatre in Review: Life of Pi (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)Whatever you may think of Life of Pi, you cannot deny that Max Webster's production is wildly eventful, thanks to a battery of transporting visual and audio effects. The narrative unfolds with cinematic fluidity, shifting, in less than a second, from Mexico to India or the middle of the Pacific. The stage is populated with gorgeously rendered life-sized puppets representing hyenas, giraffes, and zebras, in addition to the tiger, known as Richard Parker, who is the play's often alarming co-star. The action includes a terrifying shipwreck marked by the chaos of unleashed animals, climaxing with the title character being hurled into the sea. Sequences that, by all rights, should only work on film are here staged with tremendous confidence and panache. To be sure, Life of Pi is not an overbearing spectacle. Everything is put to the service of vivid storytelling, not self-congratulatory "wow" effects. Tim Hatley's scenic design is filled with small gestures that generate big impacts: The shuttered windows of a Mexican hospital room open to reveal a couple of enormous giraffes -- and, suddenly, we are in a zoo located thousands of miles away. A crowded, teeming Pondicherry marketplace, scaled on multiple levels, adjusts itself by a few degrees and, assisted by Tim Lutkin's lighting, becomes the deck of a rusty, filthy cargo ship. (Lutkin makes assured use of a wide-ranging color palette to call up a broad range of looks.) A small lifeboat emerges from the deck, providing a place of refuge for characters lost at sea. The effect is completed by Andrzej Goulding's video projections, which transform the stage floor into a storm-washed ship's deck or the surface of the ocean. Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell's puppets are astonishing, none more so than the school of iridescent fish that makes a brief, shimmering appearance. Carolyn Downing's sound design -- featuring seagulls, thunder, and crashing surf, among other effects -- adds to the exotic atmosphere. As a sheer display of stagecraft, this production will be of interest to any LSA reader. However, there's a catch. Lolita Chakrabarti's script retains the oddities of Yann Martel's best-selling novel, which, despite its enormous popularity, remains stuck somewhere between a boy's adventure story and a metaphysical speculation. It is much better at the former: Pi -- short for "Piscine," in one of many too-cute touches -- is an adolescent, growing up at the zoo owned by his parents. It's a fairly idyllic situation at first; as everyone attends to the animals, Pi spars humorously with his sister and flirts with authority figures from the Hindu, Muslim, and Roman Catholic religions, even as his embarrassed parents urge him to make a choice. (Confounding them, Pi compares his broad theological interests to having multiple passports.) The early scenes suggest that Life of Pi is being pitched as the theatrical equivalent of young adult fiction. But social unrest -- defined less by an understanding of politics and more by angry crowds on the sound system -- is roiling India and vandals are attacking the zoo's population. Soon, Pi's father, trying to toughen up his offspring, commits an unspeakably cruel act, feeding the boy's beloved goat to Richard Parker, the newly acquired Bengal tiger purchased to gin up business at the zoo. It's a jarring moment, and not in a good way, pointing to a fundamental uncertainty of tone. (At the performance I attended, I felt for the audience members who had brought young children; this is not a family show.) Seeking a better life, Pi's father books passage for his family (and their animal brood) on a ship bound for Canada, a trip that ends in disaster, with Pi ending up in a tiny boat, trying to peacefully coexist with Richard Parker. Life of Pi has a framing device in which the boy, holed up in hospital, is interrogated by a Japanese government representative investigating the ship's disappearance. (Facing a poorly explained deadline, this intruder implausibly grills the obviously traumatized youth, to a degree that borders on abuse.) The question is, can Pi's fantastic tale, of nearly six months spent drifting at sea, with no provisions, in the company of a carnivorous beast, possibly be true, or is there a darker explanation? Chakrabarti's works to give this ocean voyage some heavy intellectual ballast, pondering God's existence and the cost of survival at any price. It would help, however, if the dialogue weren't so platitudinous. For example, one of Pi's schoolteachers says, "If only our politicians could learn from your animals. Look at this fighting in our parliament, it's just an inability of political parties to cohabit." Later, when an alternate version of Pi's voyage surfaces, two supporting characters explicitly draw out the baldly obvious connections, adding, in case we still don't get it, "The stories match." It doesn't help that this secondary account feels more like a fancy literary device rather than the authentic psychological response of a sensitive youth traumatized by calamity. And, partly because most of them get wiped out in the middle of Act I, none of the supporting characters make much of an impression. Indeed, you may notice that the animal puppets are rather more alive than the humans onstage. That comment does not extend to Hiran Abeysekera, who, as Pi, executes an Olympic feat of physical exertion while displaying a spirit with enough tensile strength to emerge intact, if scarred, from his ordeal. He is especially adept at partnering with the Richard Parker puppet, delineating their perilous, yet interdependent, interspecies relationship. (Pi learns to tame the beast with aggressive orders and bursts from a whistle, bringing their standoff to a surprisingly tender conclusion.) It's a heroic assignment and Abeysekera is vulnerable, frightened, commanding, and wearily philosophical at all the right moments. His may be the most remarkable debut of the season. If nobody else in the cast has a comparable opportunity, all are solid and New York theatergoers will recognize such familiar faces as Rajesh Bose as Pi's alternately loving and bellicose father; Mahira Kakkar as his no-nonsense mother; and Sathya Sridharan as both his uncle and a Hindu holy man. At my performance, understudy Celia Mei Rubin stepped into the role of a concerned Canadian diplomat with apparent ease. It's a peculiar production, staged with tremendous brio yet never as engaging as one might hope. Certainly, audiences will get their money's worth in terms of theatrical thrills. (For the full effect of the projection design, I recommend sitting in the mezzanine.) But don't expect the emotional payoff of, say, War Horse, another stage epic noted for its elaborate puppetry, picaresque narrative, and visual effects. The problems of this production come built-in from its source material, but the excitement it offers is purely its own. --David Barbour 
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