by Jonathan Hogue. @jthogue2.
NEW YORK, NY - Direct from a smash hit West End run, the breathtaking Broadway stage adaptation of the beloved novel Life of Pi is a soaring piece of technical achievement that recreates life so viscerally through puppetry that it connected me with my greater humanity.
Throughout the production, I wrestled with many questions. Do animals have souls? How do they communicate with us? What if the tiger fought a war horse? Surely it would win right? Then again, it is a WAR horse, so it’s specifically trained in the art of combat…
At one moment, there is a breathtaking exchange between the Tiger and Pi that reminded me of the fine line between us and the animal world, and our shared primal drive towards survival.
It also made me wonder if the tiger could have pummeled the ever-living daylights out of a war horse. Or the dinosaur from Skin of Our Teeth. Or KING KONG—OH WAIT OH SHIT
Okay okay okay HERE ME OUT. Life of Pi, but it’s just like a fight club with every Broadway puppet, kinda like when you’d throw a shit ton of penguins in an enclosure on Zoo Tycoon and they’d absolutely demolish a polar bear. Like, if you had the Life of Pi tiger against a hundred Milky Whites??
OKAY WAIT HOLD ON, MAKING BRACKETS HERE:
- Five Milky Whites vs. the reindeer from Frozen
- Four gazelle wheels vs. the elephant from Lion King
- Seven Life of Pi tigers vs. King Kong
- A war horse vs. the woolly mammoth from Skin of our Teeth
I’m being so serious right now. Like, everyone I know would go to this. Can you imagine the final four melee?? A smackdown for the ages. It would be bigger than basketball. You wanna talk about developing new audiences for Broadway - this is how you do it!! Producers are you listening??
Truly, Life of Pi is one of the most beautiful pieces of live theatre I have ever experienced, and I do believe after some thought that the tiger would reign supreme against a war horse.
That said, I stand by my belief that if you gave Milky White a knife he could really cut up a bitch.