‘Life of Pi’ at Mirvish is a breathtaking spectacle with dazzling puppetry, though its story often feels adrift

Let me cut to the chase. Or, in this case, the cat. Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger from Yann Martel’s 2001 novel “Life of Pi,” has been transferred to the stage in all his glory. And the folks behind this new stage adaptation, now marking its Canadian premiere at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, have done it without the help of CGI nor any high-tech special effects. 
How, then, have they pulled it off? Chalk it up to a feat of breathtaking stagecraft. In director Max Webster’s production, the ferocious feline is a life-sized puppet, designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, and operated by no fewer than nine actors throughout the show. (They all deserve recognition: Anthony Antunes, Fred Davis, Daisy Franks, Akash Heer, Katie Kennedy-Rose, Aizah Khan, Mark Matthews, Kate Rowsell and Peter Twose.)
The way the puppeteers manipulate the animal is extraordinary. So uncanny are its mannerisms and so lifelike is its gait that it’s as if you’re watching an actual Bengal tiger roam through Tim Hatley’s modular set. 
Richard Parker, however, is just one of the many sights to behold in this dazzling production, heavy on visual spectacle if light on narrative substance, with a story that, like its titular character, often feels adrift. 
Barnes and Caldwell’s puppets are among the show’s highlights, evoking a fantastical menagerie of creatures: fish, orangutans, sea turtles, a zebra. Their triumph lies in their wholly theatrical design. The pair don’t hide the fact that these puppets are operated by humans; the puppeteers, in fact, are in full view of the audience and we see them, in real time, inhabiting and dexterously breathing life into these animals.   
But therein lies this production’s stroke of genius: human and puppet form a single unit. Eventually, it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. 
It’s an illusion — a blurring of the senses — that feels entirely fitting for this philosophical play and takes on significant symbolic meaning toward its end, one which asks us to consider the relativity of truth and how we shape our beliefs to cope with trauma. 
The trauma at the heart of “Life of Pi” is that of 16-year-old Pi Patel (Divesh Subaskaran), who spends 227 days stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after the cargo ship that he and his family were aboard capsizes. He’s joined on his lifeboat, initially, by a host of other animals. But after each of them perishes, his sole companion is ultimately Richard Parker. 
Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti frames her adaptation as a story-within-a-story. We’re introduced to Pi in a Mexico hospital, just days after his rescue. There, he’s met by a Canadian government official (Bhawna Bhawsar) and a Japanese investigator (Lilian Tsang) seeking Pi’s testimony. His account — seemingly too improbable for the two women to believe — consists of flashbacks to his youth in Pondicherry, India, and that fateful transpacific crossing. 
Subaskaran’s astonishing performance provides clues as to why Pi tells his story the way he does. It’s a vulnerable, honest portrayal of someone in the midst of processing grief while simultaneously still disassociated from it. The actor’s transformation in the role is heart-wrenching to witness: from a curious, outgoing teenager to someone who’s a shell of his former self. 
The issue with the play, however, lies with Chakrabarti’s script. Her first act, much of it set in India, is laden with exposition. These first scenes, set in Pi’s family zoo in Pondicherry, feel detached from the rest of the play: too long to serve as a prologue, yet not developed nearly enough to establish Pi’s character and his relationships with those around him, including his mother (Goldy Notay), father (Ameet Chana) and sister (Riya Rajeev). Parts of Chakrabarti’s narrative also feel strained, particularly the abrupt twists that prompt Pi’s family to leave India and immigrate to Canada. 
The ocean-set second act occasionally drags. Though Webster’s staging goes to some dark places (Tim Lutkin and Tim Deiling’s lighting design, for instance, beguiles with shadows and colour), Chakrabarti’s material rarely plumbs the same existential depth. 
Some of the accents in this production are also perplexing. Why does Pi speak in a different accent from his family, and why does the Canadian official talk as if she’s distinctively British? 
But that “Life of Pi” is never a bore is thanks to its mesmerizing central duo, one feline, one human — rendered so effectively it’s as if you’re sitting on that lifeboat beside them.