Review: LIFE OF PI Comes to Vibrant Life at OC's Segerstrom Center

Judging from the many advertisements, previews, and short clips circulating online and on television about the show, there is definitely an easy-to-surmise draw behind the now-touring version of the Tony Award-winning play LIFE OF PI, now currently enchanting audiences at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through June 15, 2025.

Filled with innovative visual trickery and remarkable, human-powered puppetry, this impressive, great-looking drama—playwright Lolita Chakrabarti's admirable stage adaptation of Yann Martel's bestselling novel—wows with its non-stop eye-popping theatrics that combine technical cleverness with breathtaking human physicality. 

Here, wild animals come to life with spectacular puppetry, while the sets—a gorgeous blend of animated video-mapped projections and metaphorical prop pieces amidst an amorphous canvas—transform the Segerstrom stage into enveloping, realistic environments that feel cinematic in its grandiose implementations. It would not be farfetched to assume that perhaps this push for a visually-stunning stage production is a nod to the novel's own Oscar-winning big-screen adaptation by Ang Lee, because this iteration could not escape such a comparison.

The genius artisans that have combined their collective talents to bring this story to life on stage should certainly be proud of their work on full display here.

And though the play's central narrative conceit—teen boy gets stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger—is fairly simple, its execution to make it come to visual life is its primary, most valid reason to experience this play in person if one is offered the opportunity.

Broadway plays, of course, rarely go on a national tour. The few that do—as this play proves—are almost always because they offer audiences a much grander theatrical experience that most feel can, perhaps, only be equally delivered by big expressive stage musical productions (dialogue-heavy comedies and plays don't pull the same kind of mass interest). LIFE OF PI is the latest in that small crop of non-musical standouts that necessitated a touring production (WAR HORSE is its closest sibling that comes to mind), giving audiences outside of Broadway—or its original berth in London's West End—a chance to take in a production that has enough of a wow factor to keep them in awe even if none of the characters suddenly bursts into song.

Handily, this production—helmed by Ashley Brooke Monroe continuing from original director Max Webster—doesn't have a problem achieving that kind of allure. 

From its opening parade of puppeteered zoo animals (the kind that would make even THE LION KING's Julie Taymor proud) to its hypnotic, riveting boat-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean scenes that make up most of the play, LIFE OF PI keeps viewers enraptured with the promise of something more astonishing to see than the scenes that preceded it. 

It is no wonder that the play earned all three of its Tony Awards wins for its technical achievements: Tim Hatley's minimalist scenic design, Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling's expressive lighting design, and Carolyn Downing's immersive sound design that complete the play's vibrant surroundings. 

These elements—in conjunction with Hatley's texture-rich costume designs, Andrzej Goulding's beautiful video and animation designs that are "painted" onto Hatley's flexible canvas, and Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell's amazing puppet designs (Caldwell also provided the cast's dynamic movements)—all come together in brilliant harmony to create a wondrous stage production that had me and my fellow theatergoers in rapt attention throughout its two acts. 

It also helps that its title character is a fairly endearing, likable person that audiences will want to root for, particularly when you learn through the course of the play what this young man had to go through in order to just survive an extremely harrowing, traumatic experience. Whether or not the specific details he spouts actually happened, though, is the show's intriguing central mystery.

Much like its source material, LIFE OF PI, which is set in 1978, tells the story of Piscine Patel (or "Pi" for short), a curious, precocious teenage boy from Pondicherry, India, who, somehow, despite multiple weeks of being stranded out in the middle of the ocean, manages to survive a devastating shipwreck that killed its entire crew and his entire family. 

Played with compelling, charming gusto and athletic enthusiasm by Taha Mandviwala, Pi endears himself with the audience right from the start, and then earns our empathy as the play progresses. 

Pi, of course, is the most inquisitive of the Patel brood—which includes father (Sorab Wadia), mother (Jessica Angleskhan), and sister Rani (Sharayu Mahal)—which explains his  intellectual curiosity for varying religious beliefs and an affection for the wild animals that are sheltered at the zoo his family owns and operates. He is particularly fascinated by a newly-arrived Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (voiced by Ben Durocher and puppeteered by Anna Leigh Gartner, Aaron Haskell, and Betsey Rosen), but is deeply angered when Pi's father decides to feed the tiger one of Pi's most beloved furry goat friends. As they are vegetarians themselves, the idea of nonchalantly feeding a living thing to another living thing seems a bit blasphemous.

Later, when major riots and social unrest erupt in the city—particularly threatening the lives of its Hindu residents—the Patel family has no choice but to leave, deciding to emigrate themselves and many of their zoo animals to the magical paradise of… Canada. Unfortunately, while en route during a particularly stormy night on the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese-owned cargo ship taking them to their new home is tragically capsized, leaving Pi stranded on a lifeboat with just a small container of emergency supplies to keep him alive for just under a month. 

Going back-and-forth between his present day at a hospital and his past "flashbacks" (that may or may not be real), the play begins post-rescue, with Pi recounting his incredible tale of fantastical perseverance to a pair of Japanese officials (Alan Ariano and Mi Kang) who have come to interrogate, er, I mean, interview him as he recuperates at a Mexican hospital, for their ongoing investigation on the truth behind the tragic loss of the cargo ship he traveled on with his family and zoo animals. 

The erratic Pi—displaying signs of a traumatized young man who is, perhaps, frequently separated from reality—expounds on an outlandish, seemingly too-fantastical-to-be-true story of survival, claiming he spent his first few days on that lifeboat with a menagerie of stranded zoo animals: a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and, interestingly, that very same wild tiger Richard Parker—which were all being transported to the family's new zoo in Canada! Over time, however, only Pi and Richard Parker the Tiger survive their weeks in the ocean, allegedly forging a tense and fascinating coexistence inside that lifeboat.

As the story unfolds—complete with battles with the elements, battles between a boy and a tiger, and Pi's battles with his faith and vegetarianism—it becomes clear that Pi may be using allegory to cope with the trauma of what really happened during his time stuck out in the ocean. The visiting Japanese officials, as expected, are skeptical of his wild tale, pressing him for a more "believable" version of events. 

Pi does eventually offer a harrowing alternate account involving human survivors rather than animal ones (this version prompts me to urge parents of little children to, maybe, NOT bring them to see this show). The ambiguity—and the subtle, maybe coincidental parallels—between the two stories raise plenty of questions about truth, faith, and what humans are forced to do when survival is on the line.

More reliant on visual wows than on dialogue bon mots, LIFE OF PI is an optical poetic display of resilience that mesmerizes as it peppers audiences with multiple themes all vying for deeper examination. While the show is more or less a testament to the human will to survive under extreme circumstances, it is also an examination of several opposing forces: man vs. nature, blind faith vs. spiritual belief, and whether the ugly truth is more important to receive than the more palatable tall tale that alleviates some of the pain.

Through mostly innovative puppetry and dazzling visual stage effects, LIFE OF PI eschews the traditional trappings of most talking-and-talking plays and, instead, creates a visually-rendered world that blurs the line between unvarnished reality and metaphorical fantasy—all because its main character may or may not be relaying the truth. 

But as the title character, Mandviwala is able to hold our attentions just as much as the action happening all around him. On the opposite side of him, a tiger manipulated by three puppeteers is brilliantly life-like expressing a very palpable danger we can al feel.

As revealed in its more talkative parts, the play is a visceral example of the human power of storytelling—and whether what we allow others to hear and assume can be very different from what is protected underneath our self-imposed shells. One of the strongest aspects of the play is its examination of how the mind—whether voluntary or, perhaps, involuntary—uses imagination or myth to process unspeakable experiences. 

Progressively, the play and our deserving-of-hugs main character leave audiences questioning whether what they just saw is "real," whether our faith and belief systems are more (or less?) important than surviving our present as human beings, and whether truth always matters more than meaning. 

And in the end, this laudable stage adaptation of LIFE OF PI is deserving of praise both as a visually-stunning theatrical experience and as a deeply philosophical meditation on truth, belief, and endurance. Using the unique parameters, limitations, and possibilities of live theater to heighten its emotional and symbolic power, the play offers a spectacular bridge between Martel's original novel and the CGI-enhanced film adaptation that this stage show admirably—and, I believe, successfully—tries to mimic. 

When all is seen and done, we're all collectively glad that Pi lived to tell a tale at all. Any tale.

* Follow this reviewer on Bluesky  / Instagram / Threads / X: @cre8iveMLQ *

-----

Photos from the National Tour of LIFE OF PI by © Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, courtesy of Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Performances of LIFE OF PI continue at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA through June 15, 2025. Tickets can be purchased online at www.SCFTA.org, by phone at 714-556-2787 or in person at the SCFTA box office (open daily at 10 am). Segerstrom Center for the Arts is located at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa. For tickets or more information, visit SCFTA.org. 

To post a comment, you must register and login.