By Tracey Power. Lyrics by Tracey Power. “Monkey Song” and “Song of the Red Flower” by Tracey Power and Steve Charles. Additional music by Anton Lipovetsky. Directed by Kayla Dunbar. A Carousel Theatre production. At the Waterfront Theatre on Sunday, April 17. Continues until May 1

The six-year-old friend I took to The Jungle Book has now seen two plays. His verdict: “Go, Dog. Go! was better.” My pal and I saw both of these Carousel Theatre productions together and I agree with his assessment.

Under Kayla Dunbar’s direction, The Jungle Book is beautiful to look at and well-performed, but Tracey Power’s script is boring, and so is most of the music.

Power based her play on a handful of the stories from Rudyard Kipling’s collection, which is also called The Jungle Book. When his parents flee the forest after failing to trap a tiger, a boy named Mowgli is adopted by a pack of wolves. Baloo, who is a bear, and Bagheera, a panther, tutor Mowgli in the ways of the wild and try to protect him from Shere Khan, the tiger who was injured in the attempted entrapment and who now wants to kill Mowgli.

The setup is charming. As conceived by Dunbar, the show opens in a playground. Shunned by two other kids, a boy buries his face in a book. Every time he starts to read, the other kids turn into monkeys. Finally, the boy dives into the imaginary world and soon becomes Mowgli.

At first a tiny doll represents Mowgli, and it’s touching to see Baloo cradle the vulnerable little human in his arms. But the script doesn’t develop its relationships or its narrative very well. Shere Khan is never scary, so the story has no stakes. And many of the episodes, including one in which the monkeys chant endlessly about their superiority, fall flat.

The Monkey King sings an Elvis-inspired song that looks like it’s supposed to be a barnburner, but the audience I was in remained unlit.

Some of Carmen Alatorre’s costumes are witty: Mowgli’s adoptive wolf mother wears a wraparound coat with fur collar, for instance. But for some reason—perhaps because they’re not bold enough—Alatorre’s animal masks rarely come to life, despite the best efforts of the cast.

That cast is excellent. Camille Legg, who is still a student at Studio 58, crosses gender to become an ebullient Mowgli. And Kyle Jespersen’s loping movement as Baloo is the best thing in the show. Leslie Dos Remedios, Karyn Mott, and Luc Roderique round out the skilled, confident ensemble. And Marshall McMahen’s set, which frames a schoolyard climbing structure with a storybook jungle, is handsome.

But without a compelling story to hang on to, both my young friend and I got sleepy.