Spirited Away review – Studio Ghibli classic captivates the West End

There seems to be a hunger for stage adaptations of Studio Ghibli films. With the RSC’s triumphant My Neighbour Totoro about to take up residence in the West End next March, fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s magical tales can sate their interest in the meantime with this adaptation of Spirited Away, playing at the Coliseum until August.

The show, imported from Japan and in Japanese, was co-adapted (with his wife Maoko Imai) and directed by an RSC oldhand, John Caird, who first found worldwide fame as co-director (with Trevor Nunn) on the epic Nicholas Nickleby and then conquered new worlds with Les Misérables. All that experience and skill with conjuring epic spectacle is on display here.

At first, it’s a bit hard for non-Japanese speakers to get their eyes round the surtitles while simultaneously marvelling at the wonders unfolding on stage. Yet quickly the story and the production assert their hold. This show is so transfixingly beautiful and so completely assured that it feels like balm; it’s almost hypnotically assured.

The story of Spirited Away is complicated and simple at the same time. On her way to a new home with her parents, young Chihiro is sucked into a parallel spirit world from which she cannot escape. She finds herself working at a bathhouse for the Shinto gods, controlled by the powerful witch Yubaba – and encounters many strange characters as she works out how to get back to the human universe.

It’s a tale whose attraction springs partly from its imaginative creation of this other place and the gods who inhabit it, from the cute giant white radish god to the stinking Okusare-Sama who regurgitates bicycles whole and changes into a smiling river god, to the mysterious No-Face (Kaonashi) who protects Chihiro but then turns into a monster, to the boy Haku who transforms into a dragon.

Each is faithfully recreated here through a deft and inspired mixture of puppetry (by British puppet luminary Toby Olié), costume (by Sachiko Nakahara) and movement from Shigehiro Ide, all of which fill Jon Bausor’s magnificent turning tea house set into a place full of life, colour and enchantment. The sheer range of invention is impressive: the soot sprites are furry little creatures with eyes, manipulated by clearly visible puppeteers; the frogs are Kermit-like models held by acrobats who hop.

Yet No-Face’s slinking appearances and disappearances, its growth in size, its delicate gestures, they are all so subtle and modulated that it seems impossible to comprehend they are evoked by a dancer in a mask – the incredible Hikaru Yamano – surrounded by a lot of black silk.

Bright songs and tumbling dance routines also punctuate the action, which is protracted (with a running time of three hours). There are moments when the plot kicks in and there’s a lot of explaining to do, when the impetus sometimes flags. Yet Caird and his team conjure sensation after sensation, all accompanied by Joe Hisaishi’s haunting score.

Within this magical frame, there are multiple casts. In the performance I saw, Mone Kamishiraishi had just the right degree of determination and goodness as Chihiro and Mari Natsuki was a suitably scary, blue-eyeshadowed Yubaba and her twin sister Zeniba.

Everything and everyone pull together to make the entire production into a very loving tribute to a deservedly acclaimed film. It’s captivating.