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    The Jungle Book: - play script
    The Jungle Book: - play script
    The Jungle Book: - play script
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    The Jungle Book: - play script

    By Neil Duffield and Rudyard Kipling

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This timeless classic is brought to life for the stage in a vibrant new musical version by award-winning children’s playwright Neil Duffield.


    Mowgli, the ‘wolf-cub boy’ and his friends Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther transport us to the jungle in a story that has remained a favourite for generations. Can Mowgli discover the secret of man’s red flower? Can he fight off the terrifying tiger, Shere Khan? Will he be able to overcome the many dangers of the jungle and live there happily? Or will he leave his wild friends and join the humans in the village?


    Faithful to Kipling’s original beloved story, this beautifully staged musical adaptation has proven a hit with theatres both in the UK and abroad.




    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAurora Metro Books
    Release dateJul 5, 2017
    ISBN9781906582272
    The Jungle Book: - play script

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    Reviews for The Jungle Book

    4/5

    942 ratings46 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Beautiful, brilliant, nostalgic...
    • 5/5
      Don't rely on Disney, read the book(s) for yourself! The cartoon I've seen of Rikki Tikki Tavi is a faithful adaptation, and there are other stories I was wholly unaware of, but everything involving Mowgli is a bit different. There's more too. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the film adaptations too, but the book is likewise worth your time, if not more so.
    • 3/5
      The Jungle Book, a three star rated book, would be a good book for elementary or middle level students. The book comes in pictures or just words. This book is a classic tale that teachers could have a good time with to introduce the jungle and/or wild animals.
    • 5/5
      Not only a ripping yarn, but one with many lessons to be learned -- I have met far too many of the Bandar-Log in my time. It's been quite a while since I've read it, so parents might want to make this a read-aloud to be able to explain some of Kipling's outdated ideas. Take what's good and leave the rest.
    • 2/5
      After re-reading "Jungle Book" I still did not enjoy it. It's a book for children but as a child I did not enjoy it that much so I decided to put it off for x number of years. I guess a boy who grew up with wolves, bears and panthers just does not sit well with me but I did love the Disney movie. Maybe I'm just not a jungle girl and the Rules of the Jungle does not apply to me ;p.
    • 4/5
      I loved the parts with Mowgli, but the other stories completely lost my interest, so I didn't read them. They could be good. Maybe great. I will never know.
    • 4/5
      I somehow never read any of the Kipling stories as a child, I only knew the Disney animated movie, and later the Jason Scott Lee [as Mowgli] live-action version. So I was very pleased to find just how good the stories are, even to an adult. They're much heavier than the movie portrayed, and there's a lot the movie left out, even from such a short book. Definitely something young people should read.
    • 4/5
      These are among the first books that I remember reading as a young boy. Of them my favorites were the Mowgli tales (developed by Disney for the cinema). Mowgli is an Indian infant who is lost in the jungle after Shere Khan (the tiger) kills his family. Bagheera (the black panther) places him with a wolf family that has a newborn litter. Mowgli's new "parents" and Bagheera and Baloo (the brown bear) sponsor him for membership in the Wolf Pack and, much to Shere Khan's chagrin, he is admitted. Thus Mowgli is raised according to Jungle Law, but has engendered the enmity of Shere Khan who is plotting his revenge and ingratiating himself with the younger wolves. This leads to an exciting denouement and with the several other Mowgli stories--there are some prequels--impressed this young reader. Kipling strikes a nice balance between anthropomorphizing the animals and understanding Mowgli's natural superiority. Also appearing in this collection is the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi--all about an intrepid young mongoose and his life or death battle to protect an Indian villa from a couple of particularly unpleasant cobras. Truly Rikki Tikki Tavi is one of the great heroes in all of literature. These stories are a great introduction for children (girls and boys) to the work of a true master storyteller. I enjoyed the adventures of Mowgli and his friends and eventually discovered more Kipling as I grew older.
    • 5/5
      I have to say I like the movie better, but I think that's because of the music! It was an interesting story. Kipling either has an amazing imagination or he actually spent time in the jungle. Maybe it's both.
    • 4/5
      This classic story of a boy raised by a pack of wolves has lost none of its power over the years, but the Disney movie certainly doesn't do it justice. Mowgli's journey to manhood is so much more complicated than that depiction shows. He learns the jungle law from the vivid characters Baloo the bear and the panther Bagheera and he must fight the tiger Shere Khan, but the true story lies in his life as a misfit. Though he's raised in the jungle, most animals never accept him. Then when he returns to the human village he finds the same is true there. He has no real home and the pain of that breaks his heart.
    • 3/5
      I hadn't realized The Jungle Book was actually a collection of stories Kipling wrote, including the one I know and love in the form of a Disney movie. I was quite surprised (and happy!) to see Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (a personal favorite of mine) and a few others that I hadn't heard of. Each story was entertaining, short, and descriptive. It made me want to go back and watch the movie versions of The Jungle Book (in which I don't recall Bagheera being quite so endearing) and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. This is a classic that many can enjoy for generations to come.
    • 4/5
      This small paperback edition contained the first three stories of Kipling's Jungle Books - "Mowgli's Brother"; "Kaa's Hunting"; and "Tiger! Tiger!"

      Kipling's prose impressed me with it's poetry and imaginative metaphors. A beautiful love letter to his adopted homeland of India. These stories have aged remarkably well.

      A must read for children, tweens, teen, young adults, and the young at heart.
    • 2/5
      One of my favorites.
    • 3/5
      Verzameling verhalen waarvan alleen eerste 5 over Mowgli. Verhalen telkens gevolgd door bijhorend lied; zeer mooi geschreven.
    • 5/5
      best book ever... couldn't recommend enough
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this as an adult far more than I did as a child. When young, I expected the whole book to be about Mowgli. As an adult, I remembered that it was a collection of many things and thus wasn't disappointed. In fact, some of my favourites were not Mowgli stories. I particularly liked the story of the white seal.Kipling has a real gift with words (reminds me a little of Ursula le Guin) and some of his tales read like myth.I also appreciate the poems a lot more now. Kipling has a wonderful sense of rhythm, which I totally failed to appreciate when younger, but now really love.A small bonus for me was realising that the poem with 'Her Majesty's Servants' was set to the rhythm of several songs that I knew. When he talks of the cavalry cantering to 'Bonnie Dundee', the metre is that of 'Bonnie Dundee'. He also works 'British Grenadiers' and 'Lincolnshire Poacher' into the same poem.
    • 3/5
      A favorite classic from my childhood.
    • 3/5
      What can you say about such a classic as this? Mowgli is raised in the wilds of the Indian Junble by wolves, and has a series of adventures, in which he proves himself brave, and kind and fair. I enjoyed reading the stories that make up The Jungle Book, for all they were a product of the era in which they were written.
    • 5/5
      Even better now than when I was a child

      This is the first time I have read this book since I was a little girl. The stories are well written, for adult and child alike. It is a great thing to get to know these classical characters.
    • 3/5
      I think this book is a bit gruesome for children, but... oh well, that's just me. Maybe it's all a matter of point of view, the original fairy tales are not half as glamorous as it is shown by the Disney universe.

      I usually dislike books with talking animals, and this one was no exception. I found that this book was rather bland and it failed to draw my attention to any of its tales. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's was, by far, the most interesting one. As for the other ones, well, they're not really impressive. Indeed, perhaps I'm not the target audience of this book, thus my lack of interest for most of its aspects.
    • 3/5
      My standard four teacher placed this collection into my hands knowing that I was a keen reader. I think he was trying to steer me towards the classics and away from Enid Blyton. I'm glad someone did. I read it, but I had no further guidance, so I was a bit perplexed. I asked my father to take a look. He's a non-reader really. He read a few paragraphs and said, 'What a load of rubbish.' (This didn't help.)
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable. Kipling knows his Subcontinent thoroughly and this epic yarn of an orphan boy raised by a menagerie of animals is priceless. Even Kaa the snake is a wise teacher to the boy. Much more involved than the wonderful cartoon movie by Disney, this book should be read first.
    • 5/5
      The delightful tales in The Jungle Book can and should be enjoyed by young and old. Mowgli, a human child in India, is rescued by wolves and raised by them with wolf brothers and sisters by wolf parents, after an evil lame tiger chased away his human parents. The tiger who not only kills humans wants to control the wolf pact. He tells the wolves insistently that Mowgli belongs to him. Mowgli has many adventures among the wolves and later among humans. Once, for instance, he was captured when he was ten or eleven years old by monkeys, who are portrayed as stupid forgetful creatures in the book. He is saved during a lengthy battle by Bagheera the black panther who loves him and by Baloo the bear that is his instructor, as well as the python Kaa who respects him. Mowgli leaves the jungle and goes to live in the human village. He thinks that people act and think strangely, speak foolishly, and believe that they can change things, which Mowgli knows cannot be changed. These are just some of Mowgli's many adventures. The book also contains exploits by many different animals, such as the story of the white seal that saves other seals from being killed by men for their skins, the mongoose who rescues a family from husband and wife cobras, and a boy who sees elephants dance.
    • 4/5
      Kipling's famous story about a boy who is left to live in the jungle. A charming and timeless tale.
    • 4/5
      Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has always been my favourite story in this book.
    • 4/5
      Most people will be familiar with this story, and will know why it is a classic. On the other hand, they may have not read the original version with the additional tales and poetry. It was worth reading these, even though the story of Mowgli is certainly the best known story for a good reason! The other tales though show the versatility of the author, and are engaging in their own way
    • 3/5
      My mom gave me a lot of classics when I was growing up, all big-text on pulpy paper and bright covers, perfect for the young book nerd. I loved the Jungle Books, I always thought she'd read them too, but talking to her recently, I guess she never read much Kipling. I'd forgotten that the first Jungle Book has side stories about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the bit about the elephants dancing and whatnot. Only the first half is really about Mowgli at all. The point of reading this, besides my obvious addiction, is so that I have the story straight in my head during The Second Jungle Book, which had passages that stuck in my brain like nothing else over the years.
    • 3/5
      A great classic.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful, brilliant, nostalgic...
    • 3/5
      Rudyard Kipling’s _The Jungle Book_ is an enjoyable read. A collection of short stories, all of which revolve around the lives and troubles of different animals and the people who interact with them, it has a surprising amount of depth coupled with rather pleasant prose. The most famous of these stories are probably those that revolve around Mowgli, the jungle boy raised by wolves in India whose adventures with Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther against the machinations of Shere Khan the tiger are fairly well-known (even resulting in a typically watered-down Disney movie from many years ago).

      All of the stories are notable for their fairly even handed treatment of the interactions between animals and men. The tragedy and pathos of the tribulations and abuse animals often have to suffer at the hands of man are not glossed over, but neither is it implied that all interactions between mankind and the animal kingdom are destructive or unwarranted. The animals are presented as having languages and customs of their own and Kipling generally does a pretty neat trick of managing to straddle the line between having his animal characters behave too much like humans and having them fall into unrelatability by being purely ‘animals’. The most significant contravention of this occurs, I think, in the story “Her Majesty’s Servants” in which, in my opinion, a group of animals serving various roles in a British regiment shade a bit more towards taking on the roles of their all-too human handlers. That quibble aside I enjoyed these morality fables and adventure stories, with those centring on Mowgli and his lessons in the Laws of the Jungle topping the list. Good clean fun with enough meat to the bone to give you something to think about.

    Book preview

    The Jungle Book - Neil Duffield

    Pattison

    Introduction

    When, in 1992, I was approached by Action Transport Theatre Company to write a stage adaptation of The Jungle Book, I was fairly reluctant to take it on. The Disney film was much known and loved and my fear was that any stage version would be doomed to failure in comparison. However, when I went back to Kipling's original stories I found them very different to the film. And so, with the provisor that the stage version would bear little resemblance to the film, I felt happy to take on the commission.

    The Jungle Book itself is a collection of short stories which were originally published in magazines in 1893/4. Only three of them are concerned with the adventures of Mowgli the man-cub. However, in 1895 Kipling published The Second Jungle Book, a further collection of short stories, which included five more Mowgli stories.

    In adapting the stories for the stage I drew on material from all eight and set about the task of combining and blending them into one coherent narrative. What I like about the stories is that they are about growing up and coming of age. In his journey from boy to man, Mowgli has to overcome great obstacles and make difficult decisions. He learns that life is not easy and can sometimes throw up deeply contradictory situations. More than anything he has to find out which tribe, if any, he truly belongs to. In this sense Mowgli's story is universal. He learns the lessons all of us have to learn.

    Since I first wrote it, the script has received many productions, both professional and amateur, all over the world. However, until this year it has never been published. And I’m particularly pleased that its publication will be based on and featuring a youth theatre production. I’m a firm believer in the power of theatre to enrich the lives and education of children and young people, to help them learn to live passionate and compassionate lives. The Point Youth Theatre share this belief and combine it with high quality standards in the work they undertake – last year they staged an excellent production of my adaptation of A Christmas Carol. And so I’m especially pleased and proud that it will be their production of The Jungle Book which will feature in Aurora Metro’s publication of the script.

    Neil Duffield 2011

    THE JUNGLE BOOK

    by Rudyard Kipling

    adapted for the stage by Neil Duffield

    The Jungle Book was performed by The Point Youth Theatre as a promenade production at Itchen Valley Country Park from the 2nd – 7th August 2011 with the following cast:

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