Beware the boozy bear, Mowgli . . . it’s a jungle out there
The Jungle Book (Richmond Theatre & touring) Verdict: Fun for your man-cubs ★★★✩✩ Cirque Berserk (Peacock Theatre) Verdict: Why do they do it? ★★★✩✩
RUDYARD Kipling purists may shudder at some of the 21st-century patois, but a touring musical of The Jungle Book offers jolly half-term entertainment for families.
Kipling’s stories about Mowgli the man-cub — a child reared by a jungle wolf pack — have been adapted by Jessica Swale and given a musical shine by composer Joe Stilgoe.
it all makes for a cheerful, if occasionally slightly preachy evening: a closing anthem, about how it doesn’t matter if you’re a bit different because the pack will care for you, tested my gorge somewhat.
The opening sight of a bare stage and the rumour of puppetry had provoked a certain dread, but this was soon dispelled by quick, clear story-telling. The puppetry is minimal and unobtrusive.
The wolves, led by mighty Akela (who, inevitably, has been turned into a female wolf), fear they must surrender the infant Mowgli to nasty tiger Shere Khan. The law of the Jungle saves the baby when two separate animals come forward to adopt the child. They are Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther.
Any spectres of the 1967 and 2016 films are soon exorcised. This production, which originated in northampton, has a modern British flavour.
Baloo (Dyfrig Morris) is played as a bibulous Welsh character, one of the wolves is a Scouser and a monkey keeps gasping the expression ‘O.M.g’. lloyd gorman’s melodramatically wicked Shere Khan is a cross between Freddie Mercury and Boycie from Only Fools And Horses. He has a song contemplating how best to eat Mowgli: raw like sushi, with nachos, or maybe mashed-up. Choices, choices.
BUT if this makes it sound unduly silly, that is unfair. The narrative does convey an element of danger, but the animals’ nobility in Kipling’s original has been diluted to appeal to primary-school children. A pack of cub scouts in the Richmond Theatre’s stalls on Wednesday night seemed to enjoy it well enough, mind you.
Keziah Joseph’s Mowgli is appropriately skinny and innocent. Kaa the snake (Rachel Dawson) has an impressively big, lurid green body whose skin she is in the process of shedding. ‘Ageing is disgusting,’ she sighs.
i enjoyed this show a lot more than i expected to. Maybe it will encourage a new generation to discover the neglected Kipling — not least his astonishing novel Kim, which is more thrillingly multi-cultural and ‘inclusive’ than much of the claptrap sponsored by the Arts Council.
liOn tamers, elephant acts and dwarf catapults now being beyond the pale, what can a circus do to attract customers? Cirque Berserk goes for an evening of nicely arch routines involving tumblers, flaming-limbo dancers and a knife thrower with an alarmingly excitable and plump aide.
The whole thing has a slightly oldfashioned feel, like something from behind the old iron Curtain. There is a contortionist, some ho-hum acrobatics, a Scots clown called Tweedy, bola-clacking (bolas are those pieces of rope with metal balls at the end), a foot juggler with hefty hams and the motorcycling ‘globe of Death’ which involves lads on motorbikes whizzing at high speed inside a circular cage. i have seen that a few times now and still gasp at their daring. lord knows how they do it without crashing.
The show lasts for almost two hours and the interval conversations were basically just that: how don’t they kill themselves? That is about as far as it goes. You should not expect intellectual stimulation.
A gang of women at the back of the stalls had done some pre-loading on the drinks and gave guttural groans of desire when some of the beefier circus lads bared their chests.
We had a Mongolian who climbed a tower of chairs, human pyramids by a Timbuktu troupe, and a splendid moment when contortionist Odka, also from Mongolia (they must have time on their toes in Ulan Bator), climbed out of a 2ft bell jar, stretched her legs over her head and twanged a bow and arrow using her feet, duly hitting a target. How jolly useful.