The Jungle Book

A new adaptation by Anupama Chandrasekhar after Rudyard Kipling.

This family theatre production returns to Rudyard Kipling's tales of Mowgli, a child brought up by wolves in India's jungles. Anupama Chandrasekhar wrote the new adaptation, Indhu Rubasingham directs, and the puppetry is by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes. The telling relies on puppets, comic moments and original characters, and it views the story through a contemporary lens, asking how nature and upbringing shape a life.

The setting moves to the Sundarbans mangrove forest in Northern India. The staging focuses on climate change and on the way people and animals depend on one another in the natural world. Ma Bonbibi, the Lady of the Forest, is central to the story. This guardian spirit of the mangroves is revered by both Hindus and Muslims, and in this version protects the creatures who live there.

The Olivier stage is transformed for the production, which reunites Indhu Rubasingham and Anupama Chandrasekhar after their earlier work together on The Father and the Assassin. Presented as theatre for the whole family, the show is aimed at audiences who enjoy puppetry and stories about courage, loyalty and family.