What does it look like when the familiar story of man-cub Mowgli meets avant garde director Robert Wilson? For audiences familiar with Wilson’s work, the answer is exactly what you might imagine. Though the combination is a somewhat surprising one, this new adaptation of The Jungle Book has many of the distinctive features of Wilson’s theatre: a sculptural approach to bodies and light, painterly composition of the stage picture, use of repetition and fragmentation.
The emphasis is on atmosphere over storytelling. While there is a narrator of sorts in the shape of Hathi the elephant, the outlines of Rudyard Kipling’s stories are only lightly sketched. Instead of scenes, Wilson gives us a series of surreal impressions. Tiger Shere Khan reclines on a chaise longue smoking a cigar beneath a flickering exit sign. Animals gather among the piled-up carcasses of broken TVs. A monkey swings from a huge yellow tyre while Baloo the bear capers around the stage. This is all set to CocoRosie’s trippy musical backdrop, heightening the sense of strangeness.
While this is billed as a family show, I find myself wondering who it is really for. The bright colours and high-pitched shrieks and squeals of the animals have an almost Teletubbies energy, tapping into a childlike quality beyond language. But in other ways this feels like a very oblique, adult piece, with few concessions to narrative clarity. What little verbal storytelling we do get is often hard to make out over the music – perhaps a sound issue, perhaps a deliberate extension of the baffling, dreamlike mood.
There are vague environmental undercurrents and suggestions of a more sinister, human-influenced jungle than we’re used to seeing – the smashed-up TVs, the tyre, mentions of heat and drought. But any desire for a modern take on Kipling’s tale is at odds with how Wilson works. Aesthetically, his treatment of this material is striking, producing a sequence of undeniably beautiful and precise stage images. Judged as a family-friendly theatrical experience, it’s less satisfying. But this is certainly a Jungle Book unlike any other you’ll see.
• At Aviva Studios, Manchester, until 31 March.
