Lolita Chakrabarti's new stage adaptation of Yann Martel's Life of Pi is set to transfer to the West End following a critically and commercially successful world premiere in Sheffield in 2019.
Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel is about a young Indian boy called Pi who is the sole human survivor of a shipwreck along with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The boy and the beast must learn to coexist on a lifeboat as they battle to survive.
The novel Life of Pi was adapted into a film for the big screen in 2012 which, directed by Ang Lee, was a huge success. Grossing over $600 million at the box office, the film, which starred Suraj Sharma, was nominated for nine Academy Awards, taking home four.
Chakrabarti's stage adaptation premiered at Sheffield Theatres in June 2019 to positive reviews from theatre critics. In a five-star review for The Guardian, Mark Fisher labelled the play an "an extraordinary journey", while The Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish labelled it "a worthy successor to War Horse".
The production features inventive direction by Webster, with life-size puppets designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell representing the tiger.
Given the success of the play, Life of Pi was a sure thing to transfer to the West End, and tickets are now on sale for this highly anticipated production which comes to Wyndham's Theatre from September 2021.
