There is a startling piece of transformative stagecraft towards the start of Sarah Punshon’s production of the Rudyard Kipling favourite.
The animals have discovered the infant Mowgli, a “little frog” adrift in a wicker basket on a floral silk river. One of the jollier songs of Ziad Jabero’s score strikes up, a catchy number called Jungle Jive. As it progresses, the boy emerges, first as a toddler puppet on one side of the in-the-round space, then, on the opposite side, as a slightly older puppet and then bigger again, until by the end of the song, Kiara Nicole Pillai slides down a ramp, as the full-sized man’s cub.
