Review: Life of Pi offers remarkable spectacle on the Chichester stage

The great news is that you can believe all the hype. Life of Pi, on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage until the start of the festive season, really is a unique and remarkable spectacle.

On the surface, it’s the decidedly unlikely tale of an Indian girl (in this case) who survives hundreds of days lost at sea with a famished Bengal tiger. In fact, it turns out to be, considerably more interestingly, a meditation on the things we might do to cope when our reality is so awful as to be beyond all imagining.

Is one approach to construct an alternative version of that reality? In which case, belief and faith come into play, natural allies for a young girl we already know is set on looking for something greater. And this is what takes us to the most powerful of endings after a first half which is perhaps just a little bit short of the emotional grab the piece really needs.