In Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) the law of the jungle is the furthest thing from anarchy. Social structures built by the animals are adhered to without fail. They give an often violent world some kind of order.  Akram Khan’s reimagining and updating is rooted in chaos.

We are in a future – 2029 – just around the corner. Cities are drowning, systems collapsing, food is scarce, refugees flee to higher ground and extinction looms. 

A young girl is tossed upon the seas, separated from her mother and home. She is Mowgli, the modern-day version of Kipling’s wolf-raised boy, here saved by a whale and taken in by animals forced to shelter and scavenge in ruins left behind by humans.

Director and choreographer Khan nails his colours to the mast from the start. Disaster not only lies ahead, it is imminent and the next generation will bear the brunt. Climate activist Greta Thunberg’s challenge to world leaders at the United Nations in 2019 comes through loud and clear in the show’s recorded soundtrack. How dare you? 

The young will have to lead the way, Khan believes. Jungle Book Reimagined co-opts Kipling’s characters to drive that message in a heady mix of dance, theatre and British company YeastCulture’s spectacular animation. 

Mowgli’s escape from near death is thrillingly depicted at the start of the show. Famous monuments break and sink, rafts packed with people seek refuge and Mowgli (Jan Mikaela Villaneuva) is thrown into the water and sinks through shoals of fish until miraculously rescued.

Later huge elephants stride across the stage and, in one of the show’s most affecting moments, the kite Chil is killed by a hunter’s arrow and his body retrieved and borne aloft by companions. 

Dancers play familiar characters from the book, with a twist. Baloo (the elastic and hyper-energetic Tom Davis-Dunn) has escaped the servitude of a dancing bear. Python Kaa has to be freed from a zoo (Kaa is a clever assemblage of cardboard boxes) and the rollicking Bandar-log were test-laboratory monkeys.

The Bandar-log’s bolshie leader, Specimen 1 (Max Revell), is sheer delight, as is Mowgli’s protector, the panther Bagheera (Holly Vallis)

Transitions from human to animal physicality and from everyday action to Khan’s kathak-inflected contemporary dance are made persuasively and with theatrical flair, nowhere more so than in the striking beginning to the second act. 

Here an aggressive, militaristic dance amplifies and clarifies the intent, something not always the case in the show’s choppy narrative. Still, dance fans should never pass up the chance to see some Khan, even if the reason for it isn’t readily apparent. 

Tariq Jordan’s recorded text, spoken by actors for the dancers, isn’t always clear either, particularly when Jocelyn Pook’s colourful score is ramped up. The delivery sounds stagy and reeks of the lecture hall, as do Mowgli’s flashbacks to her mother’s sadly twee homilies. 

The worst effect, though, is that the wonderful dancers look far less free and interesting when held hostage to clunky dialogue. 

But for all the tensions in a show that wavers between being for adults and appealing to younger audiences, there seems to be a strong appetite for it. 

Jungle Book Reimagined has been touring internationally since its premiere in Leicester in April 2022. After Perth it goes to New Zealand’s capital Wellington and Singapore before returning to Australia for the Adelaide Festival. Switzerland, Germany and Latvia follow.

Perth until February 17. Adelaide Festival, March 15-16.

This review first appeared in The Australian on February 11.