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Critics Review Spirited Away Stage Play in London

The London run of the Spirited Away stage play has begun at the Coliseum theatre in the West End, and the critics' reviews have started to come in. The play's website is at https://www.spiritedawayuk.com/ and ANN has details of the play here, but if you want to know about the early critical reactions, read on.

One important detail is that the play has a rotating cast, and the parts will be taken by multiple actors throughout the play's run. In the performance under review, the cast includes Mone Kamishiraishi as Chihiro and Kotarō Daigo as Haku. Both actors have voiced protagonists in Makoto Shinkai films: Kamishiraishi voiced Mitsuha in your name. and Daigo voiced Hodaka in Weathering With You. Additionally, the witch Yubaba is played by Mari Natsuki - the same actress voiced Yubaba in the original Miyazaki film of Spirited Away. The spider-man Kamajji is played by Tomorowo Taguchi. More than thirty years ago, he played the transforming salaryman in Shinya Tsukamoto's live-action films Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer.

Writing for The Guardian, Afrika Akbar said the play was "meticulous in its visual detail and choreography, delightful in its puppetry, both meditative and whirling in its speed, and packed full of comedy and adventure." Following this praise, however, Akabar also said the play "does come to feel like a gargantuan meal with too many dishes, all of them delicious, but a surfeit nonetheless." She gave the play 4 out of 5.

Sarah Hemming also gave the play 4 out of 5, writing for the Financial Times. She praises the "lovely, magnetic" performances of Kamishiraishi and Daigo. However, Hemming says that the play's closeness to the film is a weakness as well as a strength. "The episodic, incident-heavy narrative begins to tell.... More leeway to dive into the depth and intimacy that drive great theatre might have made for a subtler dramatic experience and richer exploration of the themes."

Louis Chilton gave the play a full five out of five in The Independent (which has been an online-only paper since 2016). Chilton agrees with Hemming that the play is "doggedly faithful" to the film, but says the stage version is "imbued with a tremendous visual flair and kineticism" and injects the story "with the kind of charged intimacy that you only get in live performance." Of the actors, Chilton singles out Kamishiraishi for special praise. He describes her as "evoking the character of a pre-teen girl entirely through movement and physicality. When she weeps, it is painful; when she triumphs, it is electrifying."

Dominic Cavendish gives the play middling three out of five at The Telegraph. The review praises the play's "imposing set which, with its shadowy nooks, walkways and temple-like structures affords a kaleidoscopic sense of terra incognita." However, Cavendish says the "the film's shimmery sense of wonder has undergone a rather dutiful theatrical solidification," despite the use of "authentic-feeling" masks and puppets.

Sam Marlowe at The Stage also gives the play three out of five. Marlowe says the play "often looks lovely... There's always something rich and strange to look at, always something fantastical happening; but we often don't know exactly what, or why – and too often, crucially, we don't much care." The reviewer was impressed by No-Face, "hovering and twitching like an entity from a glitching horror movie." However Marlowe argues that the play as a whole "rarely taps into the transformative, imagination-sparking power of theatre as an art form."

Nick Curtis at the Evening Standard says, "The show captures scale and perspective in a way theatre rarely achieves. It plunges us into rivers, zooms us into the sky and is visually ravishing throughout." But he gives the play another three out of five, wondering who its audience is supposed to be. "It's too sappy and fairytale-ish to be entirely for adults, too discomfiting and grotesque for some children."