WEST Yorkshire Playhouse artistic director James Brining may not be alone when he says in his programme notes, “I must confess to being more familiar with the iconic Disney adaptation than Rudyard Kipling’s original stories of Mowgli and the Jungle”.

You may well still feel more familiar with that 1967 animated classic than the book after this strange and clunky “modern” adaptation by Rosanna Lowe that throws pop culture into the Kipling mix with all the awkwardness of the Rastafarian Jar Jar Banks in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Let’s start with the positives, however. Liam Steel’s production is a visual delight, the Indian jungle bursting out beyond the bounds of the expansive Quarry stage to the walls of the auditorium in Laura Hopkins’s verdant design. Couple this with the surround-sound of sound designer Fergus O’Hare, and the young audience feels enveloped magically by the animal kingdom, until the animal kingdom emerges.

The opening mobile-phone voiceover gives an early indication that the script is not going to be this show’s strongest suit. Lowe’s writing is simply too wordy and too plain to boot, failing to match the physicality that has marked out Steel’s past work (such as the choreography for the film version of Les Miserables) or the sights and sounds of the jungle.

Steel’s production takes in puppetry (for the baby/very young Mowgli) and live music rooted in Indian percussion, as well as physical performance in telling the coming-of-age tale of Mowgli, raised by a mother-wolf in the law of the jungle before being acquainted with the brutalities and realities of the human world.

Jacob James Beswick’s athletic, Tarzan-toned Mowgli speaks in a London accent, probably for no better reason than Beswick is a Londoner, but it instantly distances him from a Leeds audience, and he never quite wins their hearts (even when wearing a 1987 Leeds United retro shirt).

Daniel Copeland’s towering Baloo the bear is a plain-speaking Yorkshire type, so that goes down well, and Cait Davis’s slinky snake Kaa is suitably serpentine, but Andrew French’s Shere Khan, prowling on running blades with a stick for balance, lacks the tiger menace to scare children.

The bling-loving, jive-talking, chav-dressing monkeys in the Lost City are an aberration, a pesky, jarring irritation with crass dialogue that feels dated, and they hold no appeal for children.

Likewise, Lowe’s band of villagers are an odd bunch. They are northern, but seemingly not from one village. Colin Connor’s boorish leader, Buldeo, is Lancastrian mill-town; Anneika Rose’s young Dulia is Scottish; and Shobna Gulati’s mother figure, Messua, is different again, although she does give the best performance.

Niraj Chag’s music fares better than the script, combining percussion and drumming by Vikaash Sankadecha and Kaz Rodriguez and Indian singing by Japjit Kaur with pop songs in the musical style of such stage shows as The Lion King.

The second half improves on the plodding first but not enough to stop this Jungle Book from being a muddled disappointment and missed opportunity.

The Jungle Book, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 18. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk