Jungle Book Performance Review

The Jungle Book is a play centered around a young boy who has grown up in the jungle, being raised by the animals.  The boy's name is Mowgli, and when Shirkan, a tiger who hates people, returns to the jungle Mowgli is forced to return to the village.  His escort is a panther, Bagheera, who genuinely cares about him.  Bagheera and Mowgli encounter many other animals on their journey.  Some of these include an army of elephants, and a bear Blue.  Blue tries to convince Mowgli to stay in the jungle and they have fun together.  When Mowgli is kidnapped by the monkeys, Blue and Bagheera work together to save him, and then work together to help him get back to the village.  They then encounter Shirkan where Blue saves Mowgli's life, who then returns to the village.

I saw the play at Henry Clay High School on the 18th of March.  It was during the day in a packed theater.  One of the nicer, and somewhat surprising parts of the play was that there was a live orchestra accompanying the play.  While intuitively one would think this is a great thing, I believe it detracted from the play.  The orchestra was so loud that it was very hard to hear what the actors were saying or singing, and made it hard to follow what exactly was going on.  For example, I did not really know why the elephant army was included or why the monkeys abducted Mowgli because I could not hear what was being said.  Also the visual effects were not the greatest, but that is just the nature of a high school play.  These also subtracted from the play a bit as I was unsure of what they always represented.  For example, when Blue wins the fight against Shirkan to save Mowgli, there is a massive fire that helps Blue win.  The fire was represented by stage hands waiving some red and orange flags.  I had no idea they represented this, and was very confused until I looked up the final fight scene online to gain a better understanding.

The great part of this play was the actors.  They are all incredibly young, but also incredibly talented.  Raiffa Samil stars in the Jungle Book as Mowgli, and impressively displays the energy and curiosity and raw emotions of what a young boy who had been raised in the jungle would normally have.  Also the actress playing Bagheera, I did not catch her name and there were not play bills, was fantastic.  She was full of energy and had an air of maturity and responsibility that made up for the inability to hear the actors by making it understandable with body language.  The actress who played Blue was also fantastic, and energetically played the happy go lucky bear who loves the Jungle.  The greatest singer was the King of the Monkeys.  She was outstanding.  I hope that all of these people continue to act because they are so talented.

Overall I would say this play is pretty good for a high school play performed during the school day.  I would recommend looking up, and being familiar with the play before you go see it so you can understand exactly what is happening at all times.  If you enjoy the energy of young actors, and would like to hear some beautiful singing, I would definitely recommend it.  In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this play and would definitely go to another play done by this school.