Jungle Book

Animal Tales

Rangbaaz Group’s Jungle Book, directed by Shivani Tanksale and Sumeet Vyas with a supporter in Seher Latif and a backstage team that pulled out all stops to make the production enjoyable, plus actors who had kids in the audience go a little wild with excitement, is an example on how huge budgets are not needed when imagination is in overdrive.

Umbrellas painted in fluorescent colours make for an enchanted forest (Sunil Pandit, wow!), where a “man cub” Mowgli (Mayur More) is raised by wild animals.  The animal costumes with masks (by Shawn Lewis) and the creation of puppets (Pavitra Sarkar) for the garrulous vultures, and it is easy for a child to imagine Rudyard Kipling’s classic coming alive on stage. The cheeky monkeys with orange bottoms and red tails were delightful enough, but the star of the show was Faezeh Jalali playing the serpent Kaa—an instant hit with children who gaped as she slithered down on red cloth and did her mallakhamb moves, dressed in a gold body suit.  “I say hiss, you say Kaa,” she crooned and had kids screaming “Kaa” and by the end of the show totally besotted by her.

The Hindi was a bit difficult for very young children to follow (for instance, how many kids would know what gorakh dhanda means?), but for the story of Mowgli’s identity crisis, his friendship with Baloo and Bagheera and his fight with Sher Khan language was no barrier. Children understood the story,  and going by the demands of clicking pictures with the characters after the show, they had a great time.

Theatre for children is getting better and better as so many groups mount productions specially for kids during summer vacations.  And it is heartening to see that city children’s taste is not jaded by a glut of films, TV, video games and internet sites—they are still taken in by the magic of a live performance.  So many children must have seen Jungle Book cartoons, but they did not take away from their experience of watching on stage.