The specter of Disney looms over the Asolo Repertory Theater’s production of Jungle Book, from the popular 1967 animated film to the recent, Jon Favreau-directed live action/CGI version.
There’s also a bit of The Lion King in this Asolo world premiere, both the cartoon movie from ’94 and its stage adaptation featuring human actors cavorting around in animal-head masks.
One character’s demise, as depicted in Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 source material, was “cleaned up” in both Disney versions (and a third one, which nobody saw). This company did, however, recycle that very death scene for The Lion King.
Here, it happens the way Kipling intended.
Written, produced and directed by the Canadian team responsible for, among other things, the animated web network Kiddoons, Jungle Book (no The in this title) is an imaginative blend of living, breathing, onstage actors, stage-filling projections both still and animated, and shadow puppets operated by shadow people.
At 70 minutes, it’s just the right length for children. That seems to be Asolo’s target audience, as the season-ending show is being mounted during the first weeks of summer vacation.
Grownups, in fact, might not find a lot to like in this production, which is high on high tech but low in the dramatics department. It all plays a little obvious.
By now, most everyone is familiar with Kipling’s yarn about Mowgli, the human infant raised by wolves in the deep wilds of India. He is befriended by Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther, who teach him about “the laws of the jungle.”
From Baloo, who’s lazy and slow-witted (but who thankfully doesn’t sing “The Bare Necessities” in a boozy Phil Harris voice) Mowgli learns: “Death is part of the law of the jungle, but not cruelty.” That puts our man-cub protagonist into the sinister crosshairs of Shere Khan, the tiger, for whom cruelty is a no-brainer. And, as we learn, revenge is a big thing for the big cat.
Shere Khan, the ravenous python Kaa and the elephant Hathi are major players in Jungle Book. Unlike Mowgli and his pals, who are assayed by actors, these characters appear as shadow puppets, silhouetted on a thin screen behind the action. This gives several scenes a flat, one-dimensional feel, as they just sort of push in from the side, in black-and-white profile.
(Disclaimer: Hey, during the matinee I saw, the kids in the audience loved it.)
There are four or five original songs in the show, none of which made an impression.
Playwright/adapters Craig Francis and Rick Miller have worked an admirable subtext into Kipling’s story. The adult Mowgli, who narrates the jungle scenes as a memory play, is an architect in New York City, complaining about the houses and buildings that all look the same, even though “inside them, we are all different.”
Also kept prominent is Kipling’s core message that man is the ultimate animal, and that his “red flower” — fire — is an instrument of destruction (the chattering monkeys are the only jungle bunch who want anything to do with it). The animals have a pecking order, which is more or less respected, and understand that diversity and acceptance must be maintained if they are all to survive.
Because of Kipling, the storytelling here is solid. The actors — there are only four of them — are lively, limber and engaging.
The star of this Jungle Book, however, is the multimedia technology. When it works, which is often, we’re presented with a believable, albeit abstract, world in which humans and animals interact with one another.
The downside of the projection-and-puppets approach? It sometimes seems like we’re watching something on a very large, very flat TV screen.
The theater world is scrambling to find ways to engage the emerging generation of young audiences. Are shows like this the answer? Maybe yes and maybe no, but in the meantime, kids will find something to like on this stage.
Bill DeYoung was born in St. Pete and spent the first 22 years of his life here. After a long time as an arts and entertainment journalist at newspapers around Florida (plus one in Savannah, Ga.) he returned to his hometown in 2014. He is the author of Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down and Phil Gernhard, Record Man. Learn more here.
This article appears in Jun 14-21, 2018.