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Shotgun Players opened its fourth outdoor annual summer theatrical tour Sunday afternoon at Willard Park with an original adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s collection of animal stories “The Jungle Book.” 

Influenced by the years Kipling spent in India, “Jungle Book” tells fables set in the animal and human worlds that consider many of life’s most complex issues. But Richard J. Silberg’s didactic and rambling adaptation makes the show seem long and repetitive, more like a sociology lecture than a play. 

And although the production is directed at children and adults alike, its preachiness limits the appeal. 

In “Jungle Book,” a human baby named Mowgli – a girl in this production, a boy in Kipling’s original book – is adopted and raised by a tribe of wolves after a tiger kills and eats her parents. As she grows up, Mowgli struggles to understand who she is, and find her real identity, living as both an insider and an outsider in the world of jungle animals. 

Although “Jungle Book” feels at times like an arbitrary sociology of the wilderness based on a Kipling’s somewhat liberal Victorian sensibility, it hits interesting themes. 

In large part, “Jungle Book” is about the difficulties of living ethically in state of nature where the main concerns of life are finding enough to eat while avoid becoming someone else’s dinner. 

As a story of a human being raised by wolves, it also considers the different ways that both nature and nurture contribute to, and conflict in, the development of a person. 

Further, in its expression of wolf pack social ethics, “Jungle Book” about learning trust and confidence in oneself and others as part a healthy growing process – or not learning it, to the peril of everyone. 

“Jungle Book” also has prescient ecological sensibilities, observing how the shifting of food and water masses in ecosystems can quickly alter deeply held social relationships and customs. 

Finally, it deals with the paradoxes between community of purpose and diversity of purpose among living species. And in a related motif, it touches on how fear is the force that divides species. 

But in an effort to communicate all of these large and important themes, in its account of Mowgli’s wanderings, the Shotgun production covers too much ground and includes too many unfocused story elements,. 

Further complicating the matter, Silberg’s dialogue is very declamatory and didactic. Often Mowgli or the animals talk theory about the laws of the jungle, or list principles for survival. There are debates on child-rearing practices. Such dialogue is inherently non-dramatic. 

And there are just too many episodic story elements squeezed into this two-hour show that aren’t at the service of a clear, dramatic story line. 

Mowgli’s early life with the wolves, for example, in the first half of the play, and her later life among humans in the second half of the play, are tied together in the denouement, but in many ways they feel like two separate stories. 

Shotgun’s script is an expansion by Silberg of a shorter adaptation of “Jungle Book” he wrote for performance by his students at Berkeley’s King Middle School, where Silberg has taught for a decade. The shorter play was probably stronger. 

Among the actors in this production, a smooth, stalking and light-footed Nora el Samahy most effectively got the look and feel of her animal character – a panther. 

Anna Moore’s Mowgli has some strong moments in her biggest scenes at the end of the play. 

Other Shotgun performers include George Frangides (jackal), Meghan Love (tiger), Shaun Church (bear), Jodi Feder (wolf mother), Garth Petal (wolf leader). 

Director Amy Sass, who also teaches middle school and high school drama in the East Bay, cast other teen performers in some of the smaller roles. 

Various actors alternate playing drums, rattles, bells and other percussion instruments to punctuate moments in the story. 

“Jungle Book” plays Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. at parks in Berkeley and Oakland through Aug. 13. 

The show runs Saturday at Civic Center/MLK Park at Center and Milvia, and Sunday at Willard Park at Derby and Hillegass. Both shows begin at 1 p.m. Admission is free. 

Be sure to take a blanket or chairs, hats, sunglasses and sunscreen, and a picnic if you like. For future shows and directions, call (510) 655-0813 or visit the Shotgun web site (www.shotgunplayers.com).