The Boston Globe - Recommended
"..."Life of Pi," which was also adapted into a 2012 film directed by Ang Lee, wants us to think about the nature of storytelling, and about what, ultimately, we are looking for in stories. Tightening the market and hospital scenes, which are bedeviled by some stiff acting, would improve its own storytelling and clear space for more time with Pi and Richard Parker."
Boston Herald - Highly Recommended
"...At the American Repertory Theater through Jan. 29, 2023 (then moving to Broadway), "Life of Pi" teases at a simple story: After a shipwreck, 16-year-old Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors. But as the story unfolds, details become wild, nuanced and complex: En route from India to Canada with a menagerie of beasts, the cargo ship sinks leaving Pi trapped with a few desperate animals including that vicious hyena and Royal Bengal tiger."
WBUR - Highly Recommended
"...Stories can serve many functions: affirm or disprove theories through factual accounts, assuage fears, entertain, inspire hope and more. Piscine - Pi for short - a teenager from Pondicherry, India, whose family owns a zoo, tells an incredible story of loss, perseverance and faith that makes one consider what truly matters."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...I wasn't sure how Martel's novel would translate, since it hinges on readers' ability to conjure Pi's unlikely journey in their imaginations and ultimately decide the truth for themselves. But, despite some choppy waters along the journey, I emerged at the end of this show as a convert, buoyed by the inventive stagecraft that justifies why this story was brought to the stage."
The Arts Fuse - Highly Recommended
"...Director Max Webster has choreographed a seamless ensemble led by Adi Dixit's Pi to create the three worlds of Martel's epic yet intimate story of survival: a barren hospital in Mexico, the lush and colorful Indian town of Pondicherry, and the beautiful and unpredictable open sea."
New England Theater Mirror - Highly Recommended
"...Life of Pi is a surreal tale with an ambiguous ending. Are the animals real, or did Pi just use them as stand-ins for real people who journeyed with him for his ordeal - the hyena for the ship's cook, the zebra for one of the sailors, the orangutan for his mother, and Richard Parker as himself? Pi himself believes in God, something his sister Rani (Sonya Venugopal) does not. "Faith is impossible in the real world," her ghost tells him."
The New England Theatre Geek - Highly Recommended
"...Life of Pi at American Repertory is for fans who loved the novel and the movie. It's for people who loved the movie, too. Life of Pi may also appeal to people who don't regularly attend the theatre but enjoy a spectacle epic."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...The eye-popping special effects of Life of Pi are reason enough to see this show. When video, lighting, and sound designers Andrzej Goulding, Tim Lutkin, and Carolyn Downing transform the solid stage of at A.R.T. not into dew, but a liquid — a spontaneous gasp and applause sprung from the house. The life-size puppets by Nick Barnes & Finn Caldwell — a goat, an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, a sea turtle, and most famously, a tiger — move and breathe, taking on a life of their own."
Joyce's Choices - Somewhat Recommended
"...But therein lies a problem for me. The animals seemed more alive than the protagonist, which I suppose is partly the implication– the animals as extensions of Pi’s identity and worldview. It’s very difficult to dramatize a philosophical proposition on stage and this production/adaptation doesn’t fully crack it. The puppets are certainly literal and figurative constructs, constructs which may help us cope with the conundrum at the heart of the piece: how do we survive life? Well, we don’t. But there are certainly a myriad ways to take the trip. The play, like the book and the film, posits that it’s the stories we choose to tell ourselves which help us corral the physical and spiritual parts of ourselves into an approach to living and dying. Those stories may encompass faith, or not."
