‘Life of Pi’ opens at the Ahmanson: L.A. arts and culture this weekend

It’s all about the magic of puppets in the play “Life of Pi,” which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre — part of the inaugural North American tour after opening on Broadway in 2023 and later winning three Tony Awards. Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling 2001 novel follows a shipwrecked Indian boy who survives at sea in the company of animals including a Bengal tiger.

It’s that tiger, a 450-pound beast named Richard Parker, that captivates the audience alongside an orangutan named Orange Juice plus a hyena and a zebra. The creatures were designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, with movement direction by Caldwell, whose work is among the best in the business. It takes three puppeteers to fully animate the astonishing Richard Parker.

This isn’t a children’s play, mind you, and it’s recommended for ages 10 and older. The story has crushingly tragic elements and contemplates the big mysteries of life and death through a spiritual lens. I thought my 9-year-old daughter could handle the intense moments, and she did sit slack-jawed throughout. The puppets imbued the play with a poetry of motion and an otherworldly sense of wonder. The puppeteers were fully visible as they rendered the taut, muscular menace of the tiger and the kinetic leaping of the orangutan, making the creatures appear to be the stuff of fantasy.

Lead actor Taha Mandviwala, who plays Pi, is equally lithe and surefooted as he leaped across the stage in communion with his animal castmates in choreography that felt very much like dance.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt looking forward to a weekend of being shipwrecked on my couch. Here’s your regular dose of arts news.

Best bets: On our radar this week

‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’

From one tiger we jump to another: Twelve years before Ang Lee directed the movie adaptation of “Life of Pi,” the filmmaker dazzled audiences with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” With a cast that included Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat, the 2000 movie went on to win four Oscars — and arguably could have won best picture had the academy voting body been as globally diverse then as it is now. The film will screen in 35mm, and filmmaker Ang Lee and actor Zhang Ziyi in conversation with Academy of Motion Pictures President Janet Yang. Advance tickets are already sold out, but standby seats will be available on first-come basis.
7:30 p.m. Friday. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. L.A. www.academymuseum.org

Milka Djordjevich: ‘Bob’

Choreographer and performer Djordjevich says her upcoming Warehouse at the Geffen Contemporary show “eroticizes the labor of the dancing body.” Bob is an alter-ego and, according to the Museum of Contemporary Art’s description of the program, that alter-ego is “on a rampage with and against self-consciousness in order to bask in reverie, delusion, desire and rage. Show no mercy!” Um, OK!
7:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, 4-5 p.m. Saturday. Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo. www.moca.org

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia

Touted as an exhibition of 180 masterpieces of Buddhist art, this show at LACMA follows Buddhism’s origins in India as it spread across Asia — Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. Paintings, sculptures and ritual artifacts have been culled from the museum’s permanent collection or borrowed from private owners.
Sunday-July 12. Resnick Pavilion, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. www.lacma.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

Friday

Evergreen Review Author Pat Thomas signs his new book, “Evergreen Review Magazine: Dispatches from the Literary Underground: Covers & Essays 1957-1973,” and discusses the counterculture magazine with writer Jessica Hundley and illustrator Jess Rotter.
7 p.m. Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. booksoup.com

The Homecoming Frédérique Michel directs this production of Harold Pinter’s classic enigmatic domestic drama.
8 p.m. Friday, Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday, through June 15. City Garage 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica citygarage.org

Max Richter The innovative composer performs work from his albums “The Blue Notebooks” (2004) and “In A Landscape” (2024) with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble.
8 p.m. Friday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Venice Family Clinic Art Walk + Auction The annual fundraiser showcases the work of established, mid-career and emerging artists, with a spotlight on this year’s joint Signature Artists, Lita and Isabelle Albuquerque.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. through May 18. Venice Art Walk Gallery, 910 Abbot Kinney Blvd. venicefamilyclinic.org

Saturday

Just Like Heaven The millennial indie compendium gets a long-awaited Rilo Kiley reunion and sets from Vampire Weekend, Bloc Party and TV on the Radio.
Noon. Brookside at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena. justlikeheavenfest.com

Wicked Elphaba and Galinda’s adventures in Oz get the outdoor treatment with food trucks, live music and more, plus a Q&A with choreographer Christopher Scott before the screening.
8 p.m. Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. streetfoodcinema.com

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Michael Tilson Thomas

(Brigitte Lacombe / L.A. Phil)

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who has performed for years after a brain cancer diagnosis, made his last public appearance at a San Francisco Symphony gala and a tribute to him. Times classical music critic Mark Swed attended the festive affair, noting, “For six decades, beginning with his undergraduate years at USC — where he attracted the attention of Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky and the odd rock ‘n’ roll musician about town — Tilson Thomas has been a joy-making key figure in American music.”

Times art critic Christopher Knight dives into the photographic history of child labor as seen through the lens of sociologist Lewis W. Hine, who photographed kids at work during the first decades of the 20th century. These striking and unsettling images played a key role in galvanizing Americans to push for comprehensive child labor laws. “Legislatures in 16 states, Florida prominent among them, have been deliberating rolling back child labor laws. In some cases, major steps have already been taken to loosen restrictions on work by kids as young as 14. The erasures, almost exclusively promoted by Republicans, target legal prohibitions against child exploitation that have been in place for nearly a century,” writes Knight.

Center Theatre Group has revealed its 2025-26 season lineup, which includes the Imelda Marcos bio-musical “Here Lies Love,” featuring music by David Byrne of the art-rock band Talking Heads; the Jocelyn Bioh play “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”; Eboni Booth’s new Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Primary Trust”; a stage riff on the “Paranormal Activity” movies; the musical “& Juliet”; and a 25th anniversary revival of “Mamma Mia!” Read all about the upcoming offerings, here.

Adam Lambert

(Christina House, For The Times / UnionTribune)

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Adam Lambert will play Judas opposite Cythia Erivo’s Jesus in the Hollywood Bowl’s August production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced this week. Lambert is no stranger to musical theater, having appeared in a Tony Award-winning production of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” as well as in the first national tour and L.A. company of “Wicked.” Single tickets for Bowl shows also went on sale this week.

Topanga’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum has announced the two Shakespeare comedies that will kick off its “2025 Season of Resilience” (so-named after the Palisades fire came perilously close to the venue) in its lovely outdoor amphitheater: “Much Ado About Nothing” on June 7 and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on June 8.

The Academy Museum has announced that writer-director Judd Apatow will be its first guest curator for a new comedy film exhibition set to open in April 2027. The news was revealed during a 20th anniversary screening of Apatow’s 2005 directorial debut, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” starring Steve Carell.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Read Times columnist Mary McNamara’s timely take on why television is currently stocked with women “with no more f—s to give.”