Life of Pi, Wyndham’s Theatre, 15th November to 27th February
Yann Martell’s 2001 Man Booker prize-winning novel about survival at sea after a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific was translated into an eloquent, beautiful film by Ang Lee. Now, Lolita Chakrabarti’s improbable and visionary stage adaptation, directed by Max Webster, which opened two years ago in Sheffield, comes at last to a reconfigured Wyndham’s. Philosophy is cloaked in adventure story as 16-year-old Pi (played by Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera) steers the bobbing lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, hyena, zebra and orangutang. Movement and amazing puppetry are by War Horse veteran Finn Caldwell, with lighting and video to match.
Peggy for You, Hampstead Theatre, 10th December to 29th January
Peggy Ramsay was a formidable playwrights’ agent who terrified even her most prominent clients, including Joe Orton, Caryl Churchill, David Hare and Willy Russell. Still, they loved her, as did Alan Plater, who wrote this affectionate but sharply phrased expressionistic play for Maureen Lipman at Hampstead twenty years ago. Peggy (who died in 1991) is reincarnated there in the glorious disguise of Tamsin Greig, along with her eyrie of an office in St Martin’s Lane, formerly a brothel, re-imagined in Richard Wilson’s revival.
She Loves Me, Sheffield Crucible, 11th December to 15th January
Joe Masteroff (book), Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) and Jerry Bock (music) wrote this enchanting, deliciously scored version of Ernst Lubitsch’s movie The Shop Around the Corner, and the play on which it was based, in 1963. Love finds a way for daggers-drawn employees in a Budapest parfumerie. There was never any big noise around the show but, as with Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle or Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro, it has deservedly wormed its way into cult status.
