Red Table Theatre brings its acclaimed production of The Just So Stories to Shoreham’s Ropetackle Arts Centre on March 1st and Worthing’s Connaught Studio on March 2nd, using commonplace objects to create Rudyard Kipling’s characters.
Actors Nicky Diss, Emma Manley, Jo Wickham and Charlotte Worthing convert ordinary household objects into an array of fantastical creatures and distinctive characters, in order to tell four of Rudyard Kipling’s colourful stories about the world and its animals.
Boxes, saucepans, a slinky and hats are among the props used to tell the stories of How the Whale Got His Throat, How the Camel Got His Hump, The Elephant’s Child and The Crab Who Played with The Sea. Each one uses Rudyard Kipling’s distinctive style of language with actors addressing the audience as ‘best beloved’ and using the traditional names and places such as Pau Amma the crab, the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, Djinn of the garden and Kolokolo Bird.
Each story uses child-friendly imaginative explanations for natural phenomena ranging from the ebb and flow of the tides, camels’ humps and whales’ diets to the length of elephants’ noses.
Rudyard Kipling originally wrote the stories for his daughter Josephine and published them in 1902 after her death. The tales feature invented words such as ‘ooshy-skooshy’ alongside real place names, including Africa’s Limpopo river and the Himalayan mountains.
The Just So Stories are staged at the Ropetackle Arts Centre, Little High Street, Shoreham-by-Sea. BN43 5EG on Saturday March 1st at 2.30pm, Tickets: £7, family of four £24. Box office: 01273 464 440 or www.ropetackleartscentre.co.uk, and at the Connaught Studio, Union Place, Worthing. BN11 1LG on Sunday March 2nd at 2pm, Tickets: £7.50, family of four £26. Box office: 01903 206 206 or online at www.worthingtheatres.co.uk