Broadway’s ‘Life Of Pi’ Sets Closing Date
Broadway’s ‘Life Of Pi’ Sets Closing Date
Life of Pi, Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel, will play its final Broadway performance Sunday, July 23.
For the cast, Hiran Abeysekera, who won an Olivier Award for his role as the title character Pi Patel, play his final Broadway performance on Sunday, July 9, with cast member Uma Paranjpe taking over the role on Tuesday, July 11.
As an interesting twist, Paranjpe’s Pi will be portrayed as female in a gender-flipped version of Chakrabarti’s original script.
A North American tour of Life of Pi is already scheduled to launch in fall of 2024. Locations and dates to be announced in the future.
On March 30, the play opened at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. It recently won three Tony Awards for its scenic design, lighting and costumes, which is respectable, but a more modest showing than the nine Olivier Awards – including Best New Play and Best Featured Actor (Abeysekera) – for its West End staging.
Life of Pi, directed by Max Webster, utilizes an impressive menagerie of life-sized puppets to tell the tale of 16-year-old Pi who survives a shipwreck only to share a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a Royal Bengal tiger.