Goodspeed Opera House continues its 1998 second stage - Norma Terris season with a percussive, contemporary musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories," with music by George Stiles, and book/lyrics by Anthony Drewe, running at the Terris, Nov. 5-Dec. 13, 1998.

Set at the beginning of time, the musical introduces the Eldest Magician who has created a world of beasts and birds and fish. Everything is "just so," until Pau Amma the Crab began playing with the ocean, causing a flood that threatened the other animals. To stop the crab, the Elephant's Child goes on a quest to the Limpopo River, and discovers many lessons incorporating classic Kipling tales like "How the Leopard Got His Spots," "How the Elephant Got His Trunk," and "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin."

Just So is co-produced by British producer extraordinaire, Cameron Mackintosh (The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables). Kipling received the highest honor in literature, the Nobel Prize, for his classic "The Jungle Book."

Stile and Drewe collaborated previously on British musicals Warts and All, Navel Fluff and Other Trivial Pursuits and Honk!. Stiles also wrote music for adaptations of Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, and The Three Musketeers.

Tickets to Just So at the Goodspeed Norma Terris Theatre are available through the box office, (860) 873 8668. -- By Sean McGrath and Robert Viagas