Spirited Away: a spectacular but overblown take on the classic Japanese animation
Spirited Away, at the London Coliseum – Johan Persson
The tale of a girl who becomes embroiled with the Shinto spirit realm after straying into a defunct theme-park with her parents, who swiftly get translated into pigs, Spirited Away was the haunting, quirky Studio Ghibli animated film that got everyone carried away in raptures in 2001.
The visionary filmmaker and Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki has endorsed this stage version, presented by a Japanese company (and seen in Tokyo in 2022) with direction by John Caird (co-adapting with Maoko Imai). There’s a clear artistic rationale. Still, given the huge success for the RSC of My Neighbour Totoro, there’s also now a palpable commercial logic to whisking Ghibli’s best-known titles from one medium to another.
A tsunami of merchandise greets you at the Coliseum, which can’t be altogether sniffed at but nevertheless sits a little oddly; aside from being about a child learning to fend for herself, the work reads as a cautionary tale, critiquing tawdry consumerism.
At least you can see where your main outlay (up to £225 a ticket) has gone: this sumptuous production features a vast cast, lush orchestra and Jon Bausor’s imposing set which, with its shadowy nooks, walkways and temple-like structures affords a kaleidoscopic sense of terra incognita. It’s dominated by the bath-house that’s a pit-stop for a plethora of tired gods and the place where the heroine Chihiro must toil to obtain her freedom, joining forces with the in-situ boy hero Haku, who can manifest as a dragon.
Totoro has a simplicity and strangeness that works like a charm on stage. Here, the film’s shimmery sense of wonder has undergone a rather dutiful theatrical solidification – the approach is authentic-feeling in its use of masks and puppets (Toby Olié), yet a whiff of the inorganic persists.
Spirited Away, at the London Coliseum – Johan Persson
The actors playing Chihiro’s parents simulate, with her, the jolting car-ride that ushers in the adventure, with projected animation doing much of the visual work. Thereafter, the cinematic element takes a back seat, but we’re not quite in the land of coups de théâtre. Simple gestures – such as slinging a translucent sheet over Chihiro’s head to denote her alarming evanescence – are often deployed, but the original’s delicate artwork was more spellbinding. It doesn’t help those unacquainted with the story that the surtitles are sited high up, stealing attention from the action.
At three hours, the dream-like narrative can feel at once stretched and too knotty, and less substantial than it initially appears – like Alice in Wonderland, without the detail and depth. Joe Hisaishi’s score sounds wistful notes but inclines to portentous suspense-stoking, augmented by flurries of chorused song and ensemble dance. There are longueurs, but at least there’s never a dull costume. Whether it’s the spider-armed boilerman, “radish”-faced god, outsized baby, shambling mound of sludge, wealth-fixated witch Yubaba (like a cackling Spitting Image Mrs T) or the mysterious, mournful No-Face, who becomes the gold-dispensing gluttonous scourge of the bath-house, ingesting the unwary: all these figures and more are finely and surreally done. A lavish labour of love, then, but the magical source-material transports you further, for less.
Until Aug 24; spiritedawayuk.com
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