(Posted 4/6/23) By Fern Siegel

Survival is a tricky business — especially in life-and-death situations. Extremes push the mind and body into overdrive. But in Life of Pi, a flawless production at Broadway’s Gerald Shoenfeld Theater, it’s the capacity to redefine suffering in imaginative terms that proves lifesaving.

It also makes for compelling theater.

Piscine Patel, who wants to be known as Pi (an incredible Hiran Abeysekera), is a 17-year-old boy in India. A Hindu intrigued by Islam and Christianity, Pi is curious and engaging. He is equally enamored of the animals in his father’s (Rajesh Bose) zoo. But when civil and political unrest turns violent, his parents make the difficult decision to emigrate.

Traveling via cargo ship with the animals, alongside a nasty French cook (Brian Thomas Abraham), they head for Canada. When a powerful storm turns disastrous, Pi is left clinging to a lifeboat, terrified and alone — save for a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, which has somehow managed to join him.

And that’s where the surreal and the fantastical begin.

Life of Pi, a West End import, is a triumph of stagecraft, thanks to an amazing team of puppeteers, Tim Hatley’s sets, Tim Lutkin’s exquisite lighting and Carolyn Downing’s sound design, augmented by Andrew T. Mackey’s music. All are brought together with ingenuity by director Max Webster.

Granted, the show is visually arresting. The puppetry is reminiscent of War Horse, while Andrzej Goulding’s animation and video design provide a strong immersive, artistic element.

However, at heart, Life of Pi is a spiritual journey about the nature of truth and the power of stories to comfort us — especially when reality becomes unbearable.

Abeysekera is in every scene, and he holds the stage, particularly after the shipwreck, with raw emotional and physical energy.

Life of Pi, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s novel, opens in a Mexican hospital in 1978. Pi is being interviewed by a Japanese businessman (Daisuke Tsuji) representing the freighter, and a Canadian attaché (Celia Mei Rubin). They have one question: How did Pi survive for 227 days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a Bengal tiger beside him?

The magic of Life of Pi is the resilience of the human spirit — and the myths we tell to sustain it.