Thursday, December 12, 2024
Last year, after Nikita could not conceive, she underwent artificial insemination. Alas, no luck.
The National Zoo is still hoping for tiger cubs, but not from Nikita, who has pretty much aged out. She and her would-be mate, Metis, four years younger, are Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica). With only a few hundred remaining in the wild, the Amur, aka Siberian, subspecies is endangered, though — thanks to protection and breeding programs like the Smithsonian’s — it has come back from the brink,
The Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is also endangered in the wild, but the population is much larger, roughly 4,000. Though there are no representatives of this subspecies off Connecticut Avenue, two may be seen at the Kennedy Center just days from now. Their names: Shere Khan and Richard Parker.
First to arrive will be Shere Khan, the nemesis of Mowgli, the “man’s cub,” in Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 volume of short stories, “The Jungle Book.” (“The Second Jungle Book” came out a year later.) In the opening story, “Mowgli’s Brothers,” the despised yet feared Bengal tiger, lame from birth, pokes his head into the cave where a wolf family is sheltering Mowgli and the showdown begins:
“Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were very angry. “What does Shere Khan need?”
“My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,” said Shere Khan. “Its parents have run off. Give it to me.”
Voiced by British actor George Sanders in Walt Disney’s 1967 animated film — others did the singing and roaring — Shere Khan will be portrayed this weekend on the Terrace Theater stage by tenor Sahel Salam, a Cafritz Young Artist, in Washington National Opera’s production of “The Jungle Book.”
The cast also includes: Vivian Warren and Anoushka Sharma as Mowgli, Declan Fennell as Little Brother and Cafritz Artists Michelle Mariposa as Raksha (Mother Wolf); Sergio Martínez as the sloth bear Baloo; Kresley Figueroa as the black panther Bagheera; and Viviana Goodwin as Hyena.
Originally commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York — WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s other home base (pun intended) — the adaptation, with music by Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Kelley Rourke, is co-directed by Zambello and Brenna Corner.
The Washington National Opera Orchestra and its Youth Chorus will perform, as will members of the Indian dance collective Taal (“rhythm” in Hindi) and Taal Academy dancers between the ages of 8 and 14, in the classic Bharatanayam style.
Performances are: Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, at noon and 5 p.m.; and Monday, Dec. 16, at 6:30 p.m.
Fans of magical-realist Yann Martel’s 2001 novel “Life of Pi” and Ang Lee’s 2012 movie based on the quirky best-seller of adventure, spiritualism and psychology will recognize the name of the second Bengal tiger coming to the Kennedy Center: Richard Parker.
According to Pi — another name requiring a lengthy explanation — due to a clerical error, the name of the hunter was switched with the nickname, Thirsty, he gave the tiger, then a cub. (Other sources have been identified by obsessive “Life of Pi” explicators.)
Lolita Chakrabarti’s and Martel’s musical adaptation, which won five Olivier Awards in London’s West End, had a short (March to July 2023) Tony-winning run on Broadway. The touring production, at Baltimore’s Hippodrome through Friday, Dec. 14, will open in the Eisenhower Theater on Tuesday, Dec. 17, continuing through Sunday, Jan. 5.
As a prize attraction at the Pondicherry Zoo owned by Pi’s father, Richard Parker is as real as fictional tigers get; unlike Shere Khan, he has no dialogue. But does he really survive the shipwreck — along with a hyena, a zebra and an orangutan, until he eats them — and with the panicked teenaged Pi stay afloat for months, lost and starving in a lifeboat with a jerry-rigged raft?
Ever resourceful, vegetarian Pi more or less trains carnivore Parker, becoming attached to him, then hurt when, after they at last reach the Mexican coast, the tiger heads off into the jungle without looking back.
Or was Richard Parker’s presence an extended fantasy of Pi’s post-traumatic stress disorder? Martel readers know not to expect a clear answer.
In the touring production, Pi is played by Taha Mandviwala, a Pakistani American actor and parkour athlete, and at certain performances by Savidu Geevaratne.
For the animals, the musical employs large-scale puppets designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, with their operators partially visible within. A New York Times reviewer of the Broadway production wrote that “Richard Parker, animated by three puppeteers at any given time, is the show’s striped jewel. Chuffing, growling and panting as he stalks the boat’s perimeter, he is at once beguiling, gentlemanly and quite dangerous.”