Life of Pi – Wolverhampton Grand
I remember reading Yann Martel’s dazzling Booker-prize-winning novel “Life of Pi” in a youth hostel in San Francisco and being so consumed with it I nearly missed a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge. It really is a cracking novel and such a wonderful whirl of magic realism and bright, laugh out loud comedy. I dodged the film when it came out in case it spoiled my memories of the book, so it was with some trepidation I approached the stage version. I needn’t have worried.
Piscine “Pi” Patel is the son of a Pondicherry zoo keeper who tells a tall, but convincing, tale of surviving days adrift in open sea with only a Bengal tiger for company. A Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, no less. The playwright Lolita Chakrabarti takes the story and deftly reassembles the narrative into a spectacular...