“Life of Pi” – sliced and delivered

The young man and the sea

“Life of Pi” in L.A. and Costa Mesa

by Bondo Wyszpolski

The novel by Yann Martel won the 2002 Mann Booker Prize, the film by Ang Lee won four Academy Awards, and the play adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti picked up three Tony Awards, so clearly “Life of Pi” has hit the jackpot many times over (and Mychael Danna’s movie soundtrack is pretty impressive as well).
A touring production of “Pi” is currently holding audiences captive at the Ahmanson Theatre before another run at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.

It’s a fairly simple tale, seeded with quasi-spiritual ideas, about a boy who survives a shipwreck and then ends up sharing a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. Not an easy feat when your companion is a carnivore and outweighs you, while you’re a vegetarian with pacifist tendencies.

The story and its variations have been around for a few years, but no one seems to mention that Martel cribbed his idea for it from a 1981 novella by Brazilian fabulist Moacyr Scliar, whose “Max and the Cats” is almost a blueprint for Martel’s book. But that’s a story for another day.

The stage version is a visual delight, and the ease with which one scene morphs into the next is simply astonishing. We begin in Tomatlán, Mexico, in the infirmary where Pi Patel (Taha Mandviwala) has been taken after finally drifting ashore. He’s being questioned by Mr. Okamoto (Alan Ariano), from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, and Lulu Chen (Mi Kang) from the Canadian Embassy. For insurance purposes, they need to find out what happened.

“Life of Pi” is being heralded for its use of puppetry — adult puppetry, not in the racy sense of “Avenue Q” but rather in the more somber vein of “Warhorse,” and also with a little more spectacle than Japanese bunraku, in which gestures are usually quite subtle. On the other hand, “Life of Pi” isn’t for young children unless you want to traumatize them: Life in the foodchain, and animals killed and eaten because, after all, even when manipulated by more puppeteers than I can name, it’s still a dog-eat-dog world despite the absence of any canines.

Now, in my opinion, “Life of Pi” gets off to a bad start. As Mandviwalla plays him, Pi isn’t very cooperative. He’s hiding under the bed when Okamoto and Chen walk in, and then seems obstinate, stubborn, and sassy. This scene gets a few laughs, which makes matters worse, because if this is a young lad who’s lost his entire family and then spent the better part of a year drifting about in the Pacific ocean, he sure doesn’t seem very sad or reflective.

But then we’re magically transported to Pondicherry in India where Pi’s father owns a small zoo. However, there’s unrest in the country, the zoo is running on fumes, and the decision is made to book passage on a cargo ship headed to Canada.

It’s sort of a crew from hell, but the family (Sorab Wadia as the father, Jessica Angleskhan as Amma, and Sharayu Mahale as Rani, Pi’s sister) bravely endures the indignities. Then there’s a storm, the ship flounders and sinks, but Pi makes it to a lifeboat. The video and animation design (Andrzei Goulding), the lighting design (Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling), and the sound design (Carolyn Downing) unite to create fairly realistic and convincing effects.

There are no other human survivors, but a few of the animals are able to join Pi, and these include a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and, of course, the Bengal tiger whose name, Richard Parker, was the result of a clerical error. Without going into details, the passenger list is soon reduced to Pi and the tiger.

So what happens? Obviously this is a tale of survival, and what the two companions establish is an accommodation rather than any sort of friendship. We were shown in an earlier scene that Richard Parker is not exactly a housecat. If there’s a lesson or moral to be learned, it may be that we have to try and adapt to whatever life flings in our direction. Or, from another angle, we have to live with the stories we tell ourselves or in which we believe. And sometimes that self-deception (or even self-denial) helps us through terrible times.

Periodically there’s danger and periodically there are moments of grace, and of course Pi has to be on his toes at all times (which is to say that Richard Parker would happily accept a slice of Pi). My attention didn’t really flag, although I did wonder how Gabriel García Márquez, who wrote “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor,” might have framed this story, or how a more nuanced protagonist could have added depth and profundity to the role. But I also mention this in part because even with all the razzle-dazzle I wasn’t as emotionally moved as I’d hoped to be. In that sense, Ang Lee’s Suraj Sharma (as Pi on the silver screen) evokes more empathy.

The scene flashbacks to the infirmary a couple of times, and that’s where the play ends. Pi has told his story and his two listeners don’t find it to be very credible. They wonder if maybe Pi suffered from hallucinations. So Pi retells what happened, substituting human beings for the animals, and then asks Okamoto and Chen which version they prefer: the one with animals or the one without? Chen pipes up right away: The one with; and Okamoto reluctantly agrees.

Well, there’s a line in Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” that comes to mind: “I don’t care if it’s a lie, as long as it’s entertaining.” And also, from an old Mason Williams song: “This is not a true tale, but who needs truth if it’s dull?”

Anyway, you get the picture. It’s easy to speculate that Richard Parker represents one’s darker self, with a bit of Joseph Campbell stirred into the mix, but other analogies could well apply. It’s your story to tell as well. For the most part, though, “Life of Pi” balances the soul searching and the beauty of the heavens, when the weather is calm and clear, with that ever-present danger, that primal ball of tooth and nail just waiting to pounce should one’s guard be let down.

Life of Pi is onstage through Sunday, June 1, at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles, before heading over to Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa, where it plays from June 3-15. For the Ahmanson, where tickets begin at $40.25, call (213) 628-2772 or visit CenterTheatreGroup.org. For Segerstrom, where tickets start at $44.07, call (714) 556-2787 or visit SCFTA.org. PEN