It's more than a decade since avant-garde director Robert Wilson brought The Old Woman and The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic to Manchester as part of the International Festival. These were both shows that eschewed any traditional ideas of narrative and were consequently challenging for adult audiences, so it was interesting to see how he would approach what is being billed as "a thrilling piece of theatre perfect for school-aged children and adults alike." One thing is for certain: this is a long way from Disney.
If you are familiar with Kipling's tale of 'man cub' Mowgli (Dira Sugandi), brought up by wolves (Caroline Breton as Mother Wolf and Gaël Sall as Father Wolf) after being lost in the jungle, when the animals' council rejected an appeal from Shere Khan the tiger (Roberto Jean) to hand the child over to him, you will see elements that appear familiar amongst the jumble of words and images that make up this show.
Baloo the bear (François Pin-Douzenel) is there as a friend to Mowgli, as is Bagheera the black panther (Aline Belibi), not to mention the sinister rock python, Kaa (Naïs El Fassi). Mowgli eventually is returned to his mother (El Fassi again) but doesn't know how to behave in human society. Hathi the elephant (Aurore Déon) narrates the stories to the audience, while the monkey (Jo Moss) provides some knockabout silliness and a bit of acrobatics on a hanging tyre.
There are some little interludes, such as the dolphin who witnesses baby seals being clubbed to death, which I'm sure weren't in Kipling's original book, perhaps because dolphin and seals aren't usually found in the jungle. Perhaps this is part of the 'message', which, according to the publicity, is to "shine a light on tolerance, friendship and humanity." I missed that while I was watching it.
Wilson, as usual, is responsible for the set and lighting design as well as directing, and this is certainly striking and beautiful with its use of bold colours, cutouts and silhouettes, although there is nothing that isn't very familiar if you saw his previous shows in Manchester. Most dialogue is delivered by performers frozen in poses facing the audience, with only the person speaking lit fully, so scenes are very static. There is a lot of repetition, funny poses and facial expressions and silly animal noises—plus a character who farts at regular intervals—such as you might find in some of the more surreal TV programmes for young children, all of which produced some positive reactions from the children in the audience, but these are stretched over an hour and a quarter rather than condensed into the ten minutes or so of a kids' programme.
The score from duo CocoRosie (Sierra and Bianca Casady) contains an interesting range of styles and instruments, from traditional orchestral to beatboxing—the musicians in the pit do get the chance to be seen in spotlight individually at one point, which is nice—though the lyrics I could make out (they were not always easy to distinguish due to a combination of strong accents and a poorly balanced sound system) sounded rather banal with rhymes that are a bit approximate.
As always with Wilson, this show is a piece of visually stunning but slowly evolving kinetic art, one that takes some patience and concentration to appreciate. This show is billed for ages 6 and over, but with little clarity to the storytelling, I couldn't imagine many school-aged children, or adults for that matter, finding this "a thrilling piece of theatre", even though there is much to admire.