For the fourth straight year, when springtime sprouts in all our thoughts, Children’s Theatre is taking us on an African safari. Sparked by a brilliant stage adaptation by Edward Mast, the present Jungalbook may be the most moving and profound journey of them all.
When Rudyard Kipling wrote the original Jungle Books in 1894 and 1895, key issues he seemed to be obliquely addressing were colonialism and conservation — the Empire’s stewardship over backward countries and fragile resources. But The Jungle Books is among the great classics of children’s literature because of its powerful emotional impact, and the CT edition at Spirit Square reminds us why.
Like Peter Pan, Bambi, and Charlotte’s Web, the wallop we experience in The Jungle Books has plenty to do with the inexorable necessity of growing up — our inability to sustain the beautiful, carefree bliss of babyhood. Physically and emotionally, we’re driven. In the rational realm, we wrestle with disquieting truths. Time holds us green and dying, as Dylan Thomas would say.
Mast’s script for Jungalbook slims down — and updates — Kipling’s ruddy idiom, discarding the episodic structure in favor of a clear, concentrated distillate of Mowgli’s exotic maturation. We identify with Mowgli as he bonds with the wolves who raise him, and we ache with him as he comes to realize who he is and why he must leave the primal sanctum of his childhood.
So yes, we empathize with Mowgli’s emergence from childhood. But these are wolves — a distinctly lower, more savage species. And this is the jungle, the fecund womb that nurtured us all. What we have, then, in this mythic concentrate is the story of mankind — from our beginnings — weighted with our responsibilities as adults, as parents, as humans, as civilizers, and as stewards of the planet. That makes Jungalbook heavier than your average children’s hour.
Lavish production values make the 57 minutes richer. Taking her cue from Mowgli’s observation that the jungle has been his playground, scenic designer Sandra Gray fills the McGlohon Theatre stage with a greeny environment that combines jungle foliage with the child-friendly ladders and cubes of McDonald’s Playland. Sound designer Gary Sivak and composer Roger Davis collaborate on a soundscape teeming with animal life and mystery.
Director April Jones goes beyond the usual concepting and blocking. Meticulously, she oversees how the jungle animals move. Listen to Mark Sutton’s spit-and-sawdust interpretation of our avuncular narrator, Baloo the bear, and you’ll no doubt be delighted. But be sure to watch his angular, animal exits. That’s where much of the artistic polish and theater magic reside.
Watching Alan Poindexter’s superb rendition of the stealthy panther Bagheera, Mowgli’s secretive protector, I couldn’t help but chuckle. I haven’t seen Poindexter so far out of his comfort zone in years, measuring each predatory step. I can’t decide whether or not Jill Bloede is slyly sneaking in flecks of Bert Lahr’s famed lion in her portrayal of Akela, Mowgli’s mama wolf, or gamely trying to fight it off. Leave it in, I say.
The two main antagonists are sensational. Mark Scarboro makes a sizzling Children’s Theatre debut as Sherakhan, the bloodthirsty, bullying tiger. Confrontations between the big cats, Poindexter and Scarboro, are nothing short of electrifying.
Lightweight and athletic, Biniam Tekola’s Mowgli is faultless. All the pluckiness, overflowing energy, curiosity, and vulnerability are beautifully mixed and measured.
Minor roles are beautifully handled. Check out Kimberly Watson Brooks as the slithery Kaa, the python who scales the mountain and summons rain. One of Janet Gray’s best costumes adds a Diana Ross sensuality to her gyrations.
But Gray’s costumes are hit and miss. She seems to give up entirely on the tethered elephant’s costume, so Eddie Tucker must come to the rescue with an uncanny jungle roar. And a curiously painted bike helmet is the only clue that Jenny Reed is a turtle — until she lags significantly behind the others as they vacate the stage after curtain calls.
In short, very classy. We can be truly proud that this outstanding performing and teaching company is part of Charlotte’s cultural life.
And nothing to be ashamed of in the three other theatricals that local companies premiered last week. Two of them, in fact, were among the Royal National Theatre’s NT2000, a listing of the top 100 plays written in English in the 20th Century. The poll of theater professionals that produced the list was conducted in the autumn of 1998.
Patrick Marber’s Closer, now playing at the Afro-American Cultural Center in a stripped-down BareBones Theatre Group version, was one of the last plays — chronologically — to make the cut. Opening in 1997 at the Royal National, this romantic quadrille with a crucial pinch of Internet flavoring nestled in at the #59 position in the top 100.
In the five years since it premiered, Closer has aged rapidly. The still-hilarious cybersex scene has probably lost most of its original shock value.
The devoutly low-tech approach by director Chad Calvert doesn’t slow down the aging process. When obit writer and aspiring novelist Dan Wolf falls for photographer Anna at her studio, the equipment she uses to shoot the dust jacket portrait for his first book is worth about 10 percent of what a true pro would use. Members of Charlotte’s Off-Broadway coalition can do better. And surely these mod Brits could be outfitted with cellphones without breaking BareBones’ budget — or their artistic chastity.
All that said against BBTG’s needless self-mortification, the cast is uniformly sharp and believable. James Yost has a particularly fine ear for the British accent when he holds his concentration, so he gets the evening off to a rousing start as Dan when he meets stripteaser Alice Ayers after she’s been hit by a car. And he’s wonderfully contrite late in the game when he realizes how mistaken he was to have left her.
Dana Childs makes Alice a winsome waif, a welcome light ray of fidelity when all around her are faithless and heartless. Probably not her fault that the men’s club scene is played at such low levels of tawdriness and inebriation. The contrast between her evident simplicity and the complexities of Anna are nicely pointed in Camille Dewing’s slightly brainy, slightly frumpy, largely inhibited portrayal.
Joe Copley gets the accent more consistently than anybody as Larry the dermatologist, perhaps his most distinguished outing yet. Starting out as the victim of Dan’s cyber pranks, he evolves into a master of contemporary sexual intrigue and predation without quite losing his capacity for kindness.
If you’re hankering for both Miller and Marber, see this one first — it’s a nifty take on modern love. Four centuries after Romeo and Juliet, nobody’s star-crossed. We’re just aimless and crooked.
While Closer seems to be growing older at warp speed, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, now playing at Theatre Charlotte, is growing younger — and better. This is the time of year when the folks at the Queens Road barn announce their new season. So when they picked this vintage 1947 post-WW2 drama a year ago, they had little idea of the potent explosive they had ticking in their hands.
It detonated on opening night last Thursday — and I’ve never been kicked in the back of the head so hard by a theater piece. I’d seen this play — or thought I had — in a Golden Circle Theatre production directed by Lon Bumgarner starring Simon Frederick at the Jewish Community Center in 1990. That was back when Bush #1 was chief exec and Miller’s tale seemed to be about business ethics pitted against family obligations.
September 11th changed that. Suddenly, midway through Act 3, we realize — with shattering force — that All My Sons is about what we owe our country. How could we have missed that in 1990 — or in 1998 when the Royal National panel relegated this fireball to #68 in their top 100? Must have been the poison of the Vietnam War or the malaise of the video age that lulled us into believing that Joe Keller was merely a capitalist pig sinning against consumers — and not a murdering traitor to boot.
I’m not altogether sure that the cast realized the full power of this script until opening night when Patrick Hurley uttered the revitalized word “country” as Chris Keller’s faith in his father was blasted to smithereens. The lift provided by that blast was unmistakable. Hurley, one of three alums on hand from Theatre Charlotte’s award-winning production of Death of a Salesman, maintains a nice mixture of diffidence and idealism until Chris’s transfixing coming of age.
But Charles LaBorde and Annette Gill, who were the Lomans in that outstanding 1998 presentation, seemed to be straining to recapture past glories in the early going as Joe and Kate Keller. All of a sudden, they caught Hurley’s spark and enfolded themselves in the fire.
Beautiful Jennifer Keddy beautifully gauges Ann Deever, the girl next door who once loved the brother Chris lost in the war — and harbors the secret of his death. Fox Walton enters with a laser-sharp obsessive fury as Ann’s brother, setting us against his destructive design when he’s oh so perfectly justified.
The onset of Joe’s self-loathing is positively Oedipal in its intensity, powerfully implicating all of us who have been rooting for him. Generations born since the baby boom began have been largely insensitive to the latent power of All My Sons. The moment for awakening — and revaluation — has arrived.
Was Jeffrey as funny in 1995 when Innovative Theatre brought it to Duke Courtyard as it is now in NoDa at the Off-Tryon Theatre? Probably. But if you haven’t seen it before, the play described by playwright Paul Rudnick as a testament to “the victory of love, friendship, and sweaters over death” is still a hoot. Glenn Griffin’s implacable paranoia in the face of the AIDS pandemic often irritates me more, but Off-Tryon’s artistic director is perfect for the role, alternately cuddly and cold.
CL Actress of the Year Sheila Snow breaks into the heretofore all-male cast with wondrous results in multiple roles. Jimmy Chrismon is pure dreamboat as Jeff’s would-be lover, and Jeff Olson is flaming as the doomed Darius, the spindly love toy Jeff’s friend Sterling dares to love.
John Hartness directs with a key eye for the comedy, banishing most of the cloying mush. Walls of the set are painted in the distinctive design of an AIDS memorial quilt. You’re invited to examine the panels more closely before or after the show. Or during intermission.
They had to spread out extra chairs to handle the opening night crowd, because the good word was already out. Believe it.*
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2002.
