emily cashman performance review

Emily Cashman

Jungle Book Performance Review

The morning school performance of The Jungle Book last Friday was, by far, the best school play I have seen during my time at Henry Clay. Directed by Mr. Shuler and Mr. Junker, The Jungle Book went above and beyond my expectations. Raiffa was an excellent Mowgli and her singing was fantastic. Sydney Young played Baloo and was also great at singing. Jade Curless’ performance as the snake was geat, and I heard Anne did a fantastic job as well. My favorite aspect of the show had to be the monkey scene with many kids swinging from actual ropes hanging from the theater ceiling. I was awed by the creativity of that, and it was, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the play.

Another one of my favorite parts of the play was the continuous audience interaction. It wasn’t usually direct, except for the quick note writing to Charlie Grimes, but the cast members moved across a row in the audience multiple times and also moved up and down the aisles. I happened to be sitting in the row directly behind the row that the cast members used, and I loved being so up close and personal to those parts of the play. I enjoyed this aspect of the show because it brought the cast and the audience together, if only for a short moment, and made the experience much different from previous plays I had watched.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Henry Clay’s rendition of The Jungle Book and was blown away by the quality of the performances by the actors. I liked that there were more actors than usual because the group dances and songs were more lively and enchanting simply because more was going on on stage.