A pair of extraordinary elements make the brand new spectacle show “Lifetime of Pi” seaworthy: stunning projections, and a better-than-necessary lead performance from the sensational Hiran Abeysekera.
2 hours and quarter-hour, with one intermission. On the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W forty fifth Street.
Working in tandem through the second act, when teenage Pi is adrift within the ocean with only dangerous zoo animals to maintain him company, those fantastical images and Abeysekera’s boisterous energy create moment after moment of theatrical magic.
They’re sequences of pure motion and ingenuity in director Max Webster’s production that don’t depend on dialogue or plot to thrill us, only sheer emotion and awe. Not unlike an “Avatar” film.
Nevertheless, not all of “Pi,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, packs that very same stirring visual punch.
The play — adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s novel, previously changed into Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning film — starts off as a reasonably straightforward, wonkily written drama that takes some time to kick in.
Shy Pi (Abeysekera), hiding under a hospital bed in Mexico, tells investigators how his childhood in Pondicherry, India, led to him being the only real survivor of a tragic shipwreck.
On one hand, the primary half of Act One might be called “The Boring Bit Before the Boat,” hampered by so-so ensemble acting and unexpectedly shot-off expository dialogue.
Alternatively, these early scenes introduce the primary reason for the story’s existence: religion.
Precocious Pi (short for the French word “piscine,” meaning “pool”) confuses his parents and the community when he attends a Christian church, a Muslim mosque and a Hindu temple all on a single Friday and concludes each is telling a version of the identical story.
After all, by the point we’re watching a Bengal tiger dramatically running on water, we’ve forgotten the prayer part.
Pi’s pop owns a zoo, which is where we first meet the ferocious tiger that’s amusingly called Richard Parker.
All the puppets, by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, have the attractive, island-merchant look of painted driftwood, but fall in need of being believable.
While the puppetry is doubtlessly well done, my mind kept wandering to 2011’s “War Horse,” one other London import whose manipulated equines were jaw-dropping and lovable characters in their very own right. The “Pi”-pets are lovely, too, just not a wow.
During a period of political unrest in India, Pi, his family and their animals leave for Canada aboard a ship — alongside a vulgar French cook and rowdy sailors.
Once they’re caught in a storm and the ship sinks, only Pi survives, floating in a lifeboat with an orangutan named Orange Juice and snarling Richard Parker.
His scrappy vessel impressively pops out of the stage (the set is by Tim Hatley) and is surrounded by Andrzej Goulding’s crisp videos of idyllic blue water.
Too often in stage plays projections merely distract from flesh-and-blood actors, but Goulding’s marry perfectly with Hatley’s set and Abeysekera’s playfulness.
(With images projected straight onto the stage, “Lifetime of Pi” is best seen and appreciated from the mezzanine.)
Pi fights like hell to survive, despite starvation, dehydration, delusions and, you understand, that tiger over there.
Abeysekera’s appeal really is as unlimited as 3.14159. The actor, making his Broadway debut, has the short curiosity of a teenager, but incongruously speaks in a sonorous voice that may switch from profound to hilarious with the speed of a Bengal tiger.
Even surrounded by a sea of tech, puppets and hydraulics, he has total command of the stage.
That’s vital. In spite of everything, it’s not called “Lifetime of Projector.”
