The Jungle Book has been read in a number of ways: as an allegory of empire, a cuddly cartoon film or a motivational handbook for Cub Scouts. Yet the experiences of the forest foundling Mowgli were essentially those of the young Rudyard Kipling in reverse: ejected from an idyllic, Indian childhood, the writer was forced to adapt to a regimen of bullying, neglect and incomprehensible rules on the south coast of England. Since this bears little correlation with the experience of children today, adapter Rosanna Lowe and director Liam Steel have chosen to approach the story as a paradigm of cultural diversity.

Composer Niraj Chag introduces an ensemble that fuses Indian and western percussion with the outstanding Hindi vocalist Japjit Kaur, who drifts around the rope bridges and verdant creepers of Laura Hopkins's set presenting an ethereal, ululating commentary. The wolf pack conduct their business like a close-knit, slightly fractious East End clan; the counsel offered to Jacob James Beswick's impetuous Mowgli by Ann Ogbomo's ineffable Bagheera seems to contain the wisdom of a panther who has passed all her child psychology exams.

It works up to a point: you can understand why Mowgli should wish to escape Baloo's boring lectures on jungle law in order to hang out with a gaggle of amoral, Burberry-clad monkeys. But the concept loses its way and its integrity in the less engaging second half, in which Kipling's later story about the discovery of lost treasure receives such broad treatment that the audience begins to respond in pantomime mode. Given that Andrew French's imperious, stilt-walking tiger, Shere Khan, works hard in the early scenes to present a genuine sense of threat, it seems a shame to be ultimately thwarted by cries of "he's behind you".

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