Doni Wilson — Theater Critic

This production is big: Art Deco sets and trains and fancy hotels and mobster’s offices and dizzying dance numbers with swinging doors and madcap moves. So many hi-jinks! Womanizing, getting gigs, running from the mob, cross-dressing, romantic intrigues, trips to Mexico! It is hard not to marvel at the sheer ambition of all the intersecting plot lines and the brash and fun musical numbers that pump up the volume of the whole experience. But there is a lot going on and it’s fun just watching such a bewildering, zany show.

The mind-blowing detailed sets, from Art Deco motifs to the trompe l’oeil projections of Gatsby’s estate, and the depressing Valley of Ashes with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg looming overhead, are all extremely impressive.

The puppetry team (involving many but led Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes) will make you rethink puppets forever on the stage. No wonder this play has won three Tony Awards and the Olivier Award for Best Play. You have to see it to believe it, and even what you see will make you question what you believe. That is just part of what “Life of Pi” achieves and leaves for the audience to consider long after the curtain falls.