Jungle Book: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master
16 Feb 2020

by Drew Rowsome -Photos by Rick Miller

Rudyard Kipling's laws of the jungle from The Jungle Book are mixed with Rudyard Kipling's epic coming of age poem "If," with just a dash of the Just So Stories, to create Jungle Book. That is a lot of weight, a lot of thematic threads, and a disconcerting amount of plot for a brisk and energetic 70 minutes. Adding in a framing narrative device and the use of sumptuous visuals, eerie shadow puppetry, and a multitude of special effects, wraps this Jungle Book in an eco-fable coating.

As co-creators/directors Rick Miller (Venus in Fur) and Craig Francis showed with their immersive and spectacular Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, they are geniuses at melding technology with raw art forms to create a theatre of illusions and magic. Jungle Book has moments that are breathtaking: the turning pages of a journal transport us into the story, a figurative Mowgli-as-a-toddler puppet is astoundingly vulnerable and expressive, and a village materializes before our very eyes, from a wisp of a shadow to solidity. Metaphors conjured into actual theatrical life.

A spectacular rainstorm is real enough to want an umbrella, but getting to it is problematic. This is Young People's Theatre and engagement is paramount, but having the narrator announce that, "Oh yes, I am the narrator," and have us slap our knees to make noise to bring on the rain, disrupts the flow of the magic for this viewer. However, it should be noted, that the children around me were exuberantly enthusiastic and possibly left bruised. The narrator, Mowgli, is played with athletic charm by Levin Valayil, who is a commanding and eye-catching presence, no small feat when interacting with wolves with luminous eyes and towering elephants. But no amount of backflips and exhortations, or a sexy hairy chest peeking out a tight tank top, can make a petulant child's growth into a man capable of leading the various jungle factions convincing without explanation or example.

All of the cast pulls double, triple and beyond duty, becoming different animals, manipulating the shadow puppets, moving the simple risers, and adopting enough vocal inflections to keep the characters clear. Mina James (Blood Weddings, All's Well That Ends Well) is a slinky Bagheera the panther, as well as the embodiment of maternal wisdom as Mowgli's human mother. Tahirih Vejdani (The Taming of the Shrew) is not only Kaa the deadly snake and, with the assistance of voice distortion, the villainous tiger Shere Khan. She also has to hold the audience's attention through a long-winded recitation of the story of the elephant dance and is delightful doing so. 

Matt Lacas has the unenviable task of donning a shapeless onesie to become Baloo and over-ride the Disney legacies of Phil Harris and Bill Murray. Plus, in this version Baloo is a sloth bear with an accent on the sin instead of the gay. His powerful voice and quirky rendering get him through, before he comes into his own as the truly hissable human villain of the piece. The quick changes and clockwork precision are admirable, all the more so for being mostly invisible.

It puzzled me why some scenes - the monkey attack, Kaa's seduction, the wildebeast stampede - that should be sure fire and were cleverly executed just didn't work. In perspective, I think it might be a matter of perspective. The staging is, to accommodate the projections, a black box with the most vibrant layer of scrims being at the back of the stage. This is a touring production that is set within the large space of the YPT mainstage, so we are frequently watching something happen at a distance instead of being enveloped. For the stately shadow puppets it works stunningly, as it does when the rain, the fire and the urbanization, advance towards us. Other times it is like watching an Imax film on a cell phone. 

Kaa's appearance, transformed from puppet into real snake, at the finale is a crowd-pleaser. A glorious two-dimensional abstraction brought to vivid cheap thrill 3D. That is the tension that drives Jungle Book, how to tell a complicated story laden with historical echoes in an engaging way. The shadow puppets are hypnotic and stunning, utterly absorbing, but maybe a bit of clapping along is necessary to keep a younger audience engaged. Both theatre and the jungle exist in many forms that must stay in balance to function optimally. Mowgli's attempt to solve that mirrors the Jungle Book's creators attempt to resolve a difficult text into a magical evening. It is astounding that they almost succeed.