THE JUNGLE BOOK. To 17 July.
Oxford
THE JUNGLE BOOK
by Rudyard Kipling adapted by Rosanna Lowe
Royal Theatre Company, Northampton at Oxford Playhouse 13-17 July 2004
10am 14,15 July
1.30pm14,17 July
5pm 17 July
7pm13,15,16 July
TICKETS: 01865 305305
www.oxfordplayhouse.com
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 July at Royal Theatre Northampton
Rising to poetic moments but deliberately not sustaining them.Several influences have gone into this staging of Kipling's story: musical, pantomime and visually poetic storytelling. Unfortunately, they don't mix at all well.
Least ambitious is the audience-gratifying humour imposed on, and interrupting, the story. Crowd-pleasing devices, by their name, please crowds. But not necessarily everyone in those crowds. There were gales of laughter from young audience members at the notions of elephants trumpeting in every orifice. Cheeky audience-harassing monkeys aroused great agitated interest, arousing school party members to peer perilously over the Circle front.
Good fun, if not exactly advancing the story. More totally unsuccessful in this respect are the jarringly ingratiating moments of implanted popularisation skewing the action towards the audience rather than drawing the audience into the action (they may work better when the show becomes this year's Christmas piece at Warwick Arts Centre). These moments are too fitful to become part of the play's overall scheme, more like jolting interludes a question suddenly darted towards the audience (at least, the front rows of the Stalls) or a transistor radio appearing to justify backing music for a musical insert. It's unsurprising the language tends to fall flat in such places.
There is at least vigour to the several musical interludes, but they remain interludes, pauses in the story. Overall, the mishmash adds up to a tentative mood, never quite certain how it's all supposed to communicate with the young people out front. And this is a shame, because the animal masks and the two-person, wire-meshed faced, trunk-bearing Elephants, for example, are visual creations suited for far more than farting. It'd all have left a bad taste in Kipling's mouth, for sure.
And Diego Pitarch's forest set, backed by an art-deco tinged rock, provides a space that Lowe's production exploits atmospherically at times. There's the silent prowl of villainous Shere Khan padding over the stage followed by two of his converts, a menacing moment as the interval arrives. Or the final confrontation between tiger and Mowgli, backed by the masked buffalo the wolf-boy's going to use to see off his enemy.
Such moments suggest what could have been achieved if, as adapter and director, Lowe had trusted her author and her audience more.
Akela/Hathi: Jude Akuwudike
Mowgli: Arnie Hewitt
Bagheera/Dulia: Anjali Jay
Shere Khan/Buldeo: Alex de Marcus
Raksha/Kaa: Georgina Roberts
Baloo/Father Wolf/Human Father: Miltos Yerolemou
With: Alice Llewellyn, Ryan Wade, Christopher Poole, Christopher Thorneycroft, Shona Eyre, Lizzie Dyer, Georgina Rafferty, Kirsty Kennedy, Mark Mallard/Shelby Pettit, Daniel Seath, Oliver Highfield, Jennifer Henry, Billie Kay Payne, Dominique Tessier, Kylie White, Anna Moody, Daniel Kennedy
Director: Rosanna Lowe
Designer: Diego Pitarch
Lighting: Paul Dennant
Composer: Arun Ghosh
2004-07-11 00:58:53