Seen and Done

My daughter Elizabeth kindly organised a trip with her sister and me to see the theatrical production of Spirited Away. You probably know the film, Miyazaki’s most famous, which has become a much-loved classic here as well as in Japan. It’s about a girl navigating the dangers of a spirit bath-house, filled with strange but sometimes friendly creatures. Above you can see the Radish Spirit in the cartoon and in his theatrical version.

Being full of magic and weird beings, this is not a story that is straightforward to present on stage, but the designers have done a great job. They usually allow us to see how the tricks are done, but the effects are none the worse for that. The story is delivered pretty faithfully, following the film very closely, and it helps that probably everyone sitting in the Coliseum knows and loves the film.

This is, I think, the original Japanese cast, and the dialogue is in Japanese with the Coliseum deploying the surtitles it is famous for using with opera. It’s a deservedly popular show, and elsewhere in London you can already see a theatrical version of My Neighbour Totoro, another Miyazaki film. Someone must surely be thinking about doing Howl’s Moving Castle, though perhaps that one is a more complex business. Rather than the film being an original work, it is a significantly rewritten version of the story by Diana Wynne Jones, which has itself already been turned into a stage show…