Tiger, tiger, burning bright… In the touring production of Life of Pi, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s novel, and now playing at the Kennedy Center, it is a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, along with an ensemble of other animals — a zebra, hyena, orangutan, goat, sea turtle, a luminous school of fish — who are the stars, making the show a visual delight. Created by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes, the life-size puppets of the animal characters move in a lifelike way, under the careful control of a troupe of well-trained and rehearsed puppeteers. They are thoroughly convincing, both as the creatures they are by nature and in their relationships with Pi, the play’s human protagonist. Pi (Taha Mandviwala) and the Bengal tiger Richard Parker (Toussaint Jeanlouis, Shiloh Goodin, Anna Leigh Gortner) in the national tour of ‘Life of Pi.’ Photo by Evan Zimmerman. Pi (Savidu Geevaratne in Friday night’s performance) is a teenager cast adrift when the Japanese cargo ship carrying him from India to Canada sinks in a storm, killing his family and freeing the animals from the family’s zoo that were accompanying them on the trip. Pi is a highly demanding role, physically and vocally, also requiring a wide emotional range. Geevaratne pulls it off swimmingly. The framing device for Pi’s saga is his interrogation by a fact-driven, stuffy Japanese accident investigator, Mr. Okamoto (Alan Ariano), and a more empathetic Canadian consular official, Lulu Chen (Mi Kang). Meeting Pi in the Mexican hospital where he is recovering from his ordeal, they seek information about how and why the ship sank. They are unprepared for Pi’s seemingly incredible narrative. Like Pi’s interrogators, Pi’s family members are sketched in rather than fully developed. His father (Sorab Wadia), mother (Jessica Angleskahn), and sister (Sharyu Mahale) all have moments to shine, including when they appear in Pi’s hallucinations as he suffers from thirst and hunger in the boat. Ben Durocher, as the thoroughly unpleasant cook and voice of Richard Parker, and Sinclair Mitchell, as Admiral Jackson, crisply reciting passages from a book on survival at sea, also made good impressions. Pi’s open-boat survival story is at the center of the play. Accompanied initially by the zebra, hyena, and orangutan, and then Richard Parker alone, Pi drifts for months. Both the play and Pi love and respect animals but do not sentimentalize them. The story is one of nature read in tooth and claw. Doing what is necessary to survive conquers all, not less for Pi than for the other creatures, all part of the natural order. Ultimately, Pi and Richard Parker find a modus vivendi — calling it a matter of Pi taming the tiger would not be quite fair — that enables both to live. The Bengal tiger Richard Parker (Toussaint Jeanlouis, Shiloh Goodin, Anna Leigh Gortner) and Pi (Taha Mandviwala) in the national tour of ‘Life of Pi.’ Photo by Evan Zimmerman. The key element of Tim Hatley’s set is the boat itself. Mounted on a turntable, the boat spins, but does not rock with the waves, for understandable practical reasons. The hospital bed from the framing scenes somehow becomes an integral feature of the boat, making little sense but useful as a perch for Pi and the animals, plus facilitating scene changes. The multilevel initial setting of the show, at the family’s zoo and a town market, well portrays the culturally rich and diverse world from which Pi comes, in contrast to the austere, antiseptic environment of his hospital room. Waves and rain, plus a gorgeous underwater scene, are provided principally by Tim Lutkin’s and Tim Deiling’s elaborate lighting design. Carolyn Downing’s sound design is highly varied, best when precisely timed to the voices of the animals and other actions of the characters, but at other times too given to action-movie-like dramatic bombast. Under Max Webster’s direction, the play — save for the hospital scenes — is in constant motion, with flowing, intricate movement by Pi, members of the ensemble, and puppeteers. There are a lot of plot points compressed into Chakrabarti’s relatively compact script. Along with Webster’s rapid pace, this results in parts of the play feeling rushed, sometimes at the expense of nuance. Beyond the adventure of Pi’s eventful journey, Life of Pi emphasizes the importance of telling and choosing stories. In an early scene, Pi, simultaneously a Christian, Hindu, and Muslim, comments that the three faiths are the same in their essentials: it’s just a matter of which story you prefer. Similarly, at the end of the play, Mr. Okamoto seeks a more realistic-sounding account of the voyage — “dry, yeastless factuality,” as Pi calls it in the novel. So Pi tells him an alternative story, with no animals, involving only human survivors of the shipwreck, though with clear parallels to the animal story. What is the better story, he asks Mr. Okamoto, the one with animals or the one without? Choosing a story is selecting the meaning one gives to an event or to a life. Life of Pi’s animals, beautifully realized in the production, work with its human characters to illustrate vividly how a story can be constructed that is worthy of such a choice. Running Time: Approximately two hours and 20 minutes, including one intermission. Life of Pi plays through January 5, 2025, on national tour in the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($49–$179) online, at the box office, or by calling (202) 467-4600 or toll-free at (800) 444-1324. Box office hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 am-9 pm, and Sunday 12pm-9 pm. Recommended for ages 10+ The program for Life of Pi is online here. COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all Kennedy Center spaces for visitors and staff. Read more about the Kennedy Center’s mask policy here.