Life of Pi adaptation at Nottingham's Theatre Royal is a heartrending delight
It’s only right that this play about stories has been told before – initially as a novel by Tann Martel, then a film helmed by Ang Lee. This theatrical take, an adaptation by Lola Chakrabarti, has already won acclaim since its initial incarnation at Sheffield Crucible in 2019.
Joining those significant figures is another who made her debut as Pi in the production I’ve just returned from. Adwitha Arumugam brings emotional range, athleticism, and an ability to navigate the shifting tales orbiting the script’s dark core with precision and conviction. The fact her Pi is a woman while the book and film’s is male is apt for a story that’s about the stories we tell ourselves and others about others and ourselves.
Those different takes on what is real are presented in spellbinding ways, the play’s visual inventiveness startling throughout
Oh, and there’s a tiger, a turtle, a hyena, a rat, and some fish. They’re encountered on a boat, among other settings, with puppetry that’s gleeful and – where it needs to be – distressing. Artfully and beautifully so, but the heart of these stories is a wounded one, wrapped in layers to protect Pi herself and the people in her family and other parts of a life that’s as fractured as it is fantastic. Underpinning it all is a conviction that every one of us has or may yet have experiences as beautiful, as banal, as bloody.
If all that sounds a bit like therapy-speak, that’s just one description. Pi dances between religions and other forms of sense-making to understand her situation, which may or may not coincide with what a judge might call the facts of the case. Those different takes on real are presented in spellbinding ways, the play’s visual inventiveness startling throughout. Synchrony between the work of Tim Hatley’s set and costuming, puppet work by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, video by Andrzej Goulding, lighting by Tims Lutkin and Deiling, and Carolyn Downing’s sound – all deployed with grace by director Max Webster – ensures that every detail of this many-faceted jewel shines and dazzles.
The Life of Pi is at Theatre Royal until Saturday 20 April. Book tickets here.
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