‘Life of Pi’ blends visual magic and menace

'Life of Pi' runs through Aug. 3 at Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St.

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on July 31, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

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After a delayed opening night, ‘Life of Pi’ delivers a visually stunning, emotionally powerful show that explores survival and the duality of human nature

Taha Mandviwala stars as Pi Patel in the Tony-winning “Life of Pi,” sharing a lifeboat journey with a Bengal tiger puppet operated by three performers. (Photo courtesy of Blumenthal Arts)

by Lawrence Toppman

I awaited “Life of Pi” for 24 months or 24 hours, depending on how you look at it.

The play closed on Broadway two years ago last week, after winning Tonys for lighting design, scenic design and sound design. (The remarkable puppets, which I’ll come back to in a minute, were nominated for costume design but lost to “Leopoldstadt.” Go figure.)

Then the scheduled Charlotte opening night was canceled Tuesday, as technicians on the national tour labored over a recalcitrant turntable for an hour before giving up. Blumenthal Arts CEO Tom Gabbard appeared before the Belk Theater curtain to offer everyone tickets to another performance of “Pi,” tickets to something else Blumenthal will present or a refund.

The smart people, I realized Wednesday night, took option one.

Lolita Chakrabarti’s play, darkly faithful to the tone of the Yann Martel novel that inspired it, will not be for everyone. As Pi (the winning and versatile Taha Mandviwala) recounts the adventure that set him and a Bengal tiger afloat on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean, we learn the show’s moral: Human beings, no matter how gentle, have depths of violence Nature may someday force them to sound.

The play, sunny physically and ideologically during Pi’s youth at a Pondicherry zoo, grows darker physically and morally when his family leaves India for Canada. They’re escaping sectarian violence that has led to criminal behavior in the zoo and frightened off visitors, which makes the script especially timely: Narendra Modi’s government in India now turns a blind eye to many violent crimes, especially when committed against Muslims.

They pack their animals and head northeast on a cargo ship, until a storm sinks it and drowns everyone but Pi, an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. They share the lifeboat, drifting across the ocean, until he washes up alone in Mexico. At least, that’s the tale he tells an insurance investigator who’s trying to figure out what happened to the ship. Ultimately, Pi begins to relate another kind of story.

Ashley Brooke Monroe, who adapted the Broadway direction by Max Webster for the tour, moves events along as fluidly as the sea on which Pi rides. That turntable proves essential to the action, and you could see why the production didn’t try to work around it Tuesday. It has given trouble on the tour, notably last month in Arizona, when a show had to be canceled. But while it works, it’s a marvel, shifting locales as quickly as the show shifts moods.

You should steel yourself for animal-on-animal violence, not to mention person-on-person mayhem. The first indication that the Pondicherry zoo is no Eden comes when the freshly captured tiger dines lustily on an unsuspecting animal. Pi, a strict vegetarian, is shocked. But his own dining habits have to change when he’s afloat for weeks and surrounded by fish and sea turtles, and that’s the first time he questions what sort of person he really is.

If you’ve seen “War Horse,” you’ll have an idea of the scale of the puppets designed and built by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes. Three people operate the tiger so seamlessly from its head, heart and hindquarters that you forget they’re around. I could have sworn the beast’s expression changed from angry to melancholic to contemplative to peaceful on its voyage.

A rotating crew of puppeteers works all the animals, and the effect is charming in the literal sense of the word: They cast a spell under which we happily fall. They’re profligate with their skills: A giraffe peeps out of a high window, never to be seen again, and a baby orangutan makes two brief, inconsequential appearances. Such details lend verisimilitude to Pi’s richly populated world.

In fact, the entire show has a fairy-tale quality, initially joyous and then steadily more Grimm. Like the insurance investigator, we stop asking whether Pi’s narrative is true and ask the more important question: Why is he telling it to us? The answer brings a gut punch that reminded me of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger,” a companion piece to Blake’s “The Lamb.”

Blake, horrified by the “fire of thine eyes,” asks the tiger, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” This play answers frankly: God put all kinds of natures on Earth, sometimes in the same body. When a matter of life and death comes up, the survivors will acknowledge that truth and act accordingly.

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If You’re Going

“Life of Pi” runs at Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St., at 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; and 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday.

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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.

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