Rudyard Kipling’s fantastical tales help a grieving mother cope in Best Beloved: The Just So Stories. Kipling’s rambunctious fables, set down in The Just So Stories, create a world of magic spells, talking animals and tricks a’ plenty to explain the world’s many mysteries. When a young mother suffering from a deep, recent loss discovers Kipling wrote the stories for the daughter he tragically lost, she gets pulled further into the magical world, searching for something deeper within the tales. Created by the company behind last season’s hit The Hunting of the Snark, Best Beloved: The Just So Stories is an equally funny and heartbreaking exploration of grief, healing and the search for meaning.

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“RECOMMENDED... "The Crab That Played with the Sea,” "The Cat That Walked by Himself,” and “How the Elephant Got His Trunk" are recreated with a brio and invention that brings out one’s inner child with ease. Frequently funny, these scenes are equally warm and witty as they utilize only things found in a bedroom as costuming and props. All that energy is quickly re-channeled at scene’s end to dwell again on the poignancy of loss... Director Josh Sobel and his technical team certainly know how to tell a story with economy and invention (their crocodile made of a bed, flashlights and several bodies is particularly brilliant)... Exploring the eternal themes of curiosity, stubbornness and independence that inform our early years, the “Just So” stories are a graceful tribute in which to enshrine not just the memory of a daughter, but the memories of all childhood."

     -Chicago Theater Beat