Choreographer and Director: Akram Khan
Akram Khan’s much anticipated production of Jungle Book reimagined has one of the most ambitious approaches you will see in dance theatre, combining Kipling’s original story, hugely accomplished digital scenic design, radio-play style narrative, a topical climate emergency location and original choreography. In many ways it is a brilliant and skilfully executed show that has some genuinely jaw-dropping combinations of those different media, and yet it is tonally inconsistent, often undermining the expressive and powerful movement with middling theatrical execution and vocal performance.
Following a global climate event in which the cities of the earth are flooded, a sole human Mowgli is washed up in a changed London now overrun by animals, an urban jungle filled with different, often hostile tribes. Given protection by the wolves, panther Bagheera is tasked with caring for Mowgli and soon teams up with comedy dancing bear Baloo. But when Mowgli is kidnapped by a band of rogue monkeys, Bagheera and Baloo seek advice from feared snake Kaa.
If Khan’s production had no words at all, it would be an incredibly impactful stage event. Yeast Culture’s animated design that provides both setting and backdrop also affords an opportunity for contextual flashback sequences for Mowgli that shape her interaction with nature from the start. But it also allows live action characters to actively interact with their digital counterparts in ways that feel entirely believable and a little magical. Yeast Culture’s work is beautiful and clever and there is really nothing like it on a West End stage.
Operated via two semi-translucent screens at the front and back of the stage, the 3D depth has an almost immersive quality at times, while the ability to provide huge cinematic narratives that create the flood disaster that sweeps away humans and animals, in addition to the intimate family connections that Mowgli recalls with her lost mother, add greatly to the experience of Akram Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined.
Khan’s choreography is equally interesting when given full expression in a handful of sequences scored by Jocelyn Pook which create animal packs that have a powerful collectivism with strong shaping and coordinated movement that reference the show’s main theme about the ways in which nature is fighting back against humanity. And while the words become a distraction, so much of Khan’s work here is focused on choreographing to the rhythms and emphasis of language rather than music and the ways that reflect different animal gestures, moments of combat as well as their individual personalities.
The ten dancers too are excellent, contorting themselves into a variety of shapes to represent wolves, panthers, bears and monkeys, capturing the physical traits in their performances as well as the changing relationships with Mowgli herself – and Khan creates a gender fluid production that updates the overtly male narrative of the book.
It’s such a shame, then, that Tariq Jordan’s script and the voiceover performances feel so redundant, reducing the potential power of the performance. Khan’s programme essay insists that Jungle Book reimagined isn’t just for children – and a post-interval sequence about scientific testing on monkeys is quite adult in theme – but the overemphatic, often very stagey vocal performances reduce what should be the impressive effect of the show’s broad creative influences. While there is so much to enjoy in this production, dance is a language in itself, and that’s all the audience really need to hear.
Runs until 15 April 2023
