With so much talk about the new Jungle Book film around at the moment, and with an early start time of 7pm, it is not a great surprise to see a large number of children in the audience for Metta Theatre’s reworking of the classic Kipling tales. Sadly, many were far too young to make sense of the spoken word and rapping, the symbolism and the thundering sounds of the city that form an integral part of this particular production.
This is no Disney cartoon with a singalong soundtrack but a hard hitting look at life in the urban jungle with the wolves and the monkeys being street gangs, the panther a graffiti artist and the bear, a bin man.
Thankfully there is a very detailed two page synopsis of the main plot in the programme, and also given out as a free sheet to those who have no programme because, without it, it would be very difficult to work out what is going on in a piece that is mainly silent physical theatre, street dance and circus skills, and almost impossible to make the connection with Kipling’s work.
Baloo, the bin man, starts off the piece with a long spoken word/poetry monologue but, whether the issue is with delivery or with sound levels, some of it is very difficult to hear.
The pack of wolves, identifiable by their use of skateboards, and the monkeys, all with orange baseball caps and matching, bright orange, headphones, create quite a menacing and aggressive atmosphere on the stage and once Shere Khan, the rapping “tiger”, joins them the aggression ramps up to maximum.
With a set that is mainly street lights, some broken and distorted to enable them to be used as climbing frames, and a few metal fence panels the production does have a very bleak look to it which has a negative effect on the rare, happier, moments in the show.
Some individual performances are very good with Natalie Nicole James working very hard as Mowgli, and really shining when she performs on the aerial ring with Nathalie Alison as Kaa, who also comes into her own with her self choreographed acrobatic pole work.
One of the best moments in the piece happens during the curtain calls when the cast encourage everyone to stand, dance, jump around and clap, displaying an energy and a connection with their audience which has been, unfortunately, missing throughout most of the production.
** Two stars