Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Five stars
A dread-locked and camouflage-trousered boy wanders through the
auditorium and onto the stage at the opening of Nikolai Foster's epic
take on Stuart Paterson's dramatisation of Rudyard Kipling's novel.
When the boy takes off his headphones, stops checking his smart-phone,
sniffs the air and howls to the heavens, it sets the tone for a hip and
street-wise spectacle that's as far away from the Disneyfication of
Kipling's story as you can get.
The dread-locked boy is Mowgli, the original feral kid, who, stolen by
ruthless tiger Shere Khan, is rescued by wolves and shown the ways of
his new world by bear Baloo and panther Bagheera. Except here, Jack
Lord's ageing pack leader Akela wields an electric guitar, Lanre
Malaolu's Shere Khan is a blinged-up, fur-coated gangsta and Jorrell
Coiffic-Kamall's Bagheera a be-shaded body-popping rapper. Elexi
Walker's slinky Kaa the snake, meanwhile, brings to mind Bat-villainess
Poison Ivy with the gymnastic flair of a WWE Diva, especially when she
climbs amongst the audience in search of prey.
Played out on designer Takis' huge wooden-platformed set draped in
day-glo strips, and with tribal-sounding songs by BB Cooper and Barb
Jungr sung and played by a nine-strong cast led by Jake Davies as
Mowgli, this is a high-flying, metal-bashing and stylistically sexy
rites of passage. In its highly physicalised and utterly serious
delivery it more resembles a radical punk rock take on Shakespeare than
a regular Christmas show, and is all the more captivating for it. With
Justin Wilson's junk-yard puppets including a full-size mechanical
bull, this is a dazzling experience that borders on world class. Get
those jungle drums beating now.
The Herald, December 9th 2013
ends
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