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‘Spirited Away’ Review: Stage Version of the Oscar Winning Animated Film is Less Than the Sum of Its Impressive Parts
This theater adaptation, now in London, is spectacularly designed but too often doggedly literal in a too-faithful adaptation of a film masterpiece.
A vast backstage crew is in charge of everything from huge set pieces on turntables to projections, animated props and a dazzling array of ever-changing creatures and costumes worn and worked by a multi-skilled cast of thirty, most of whom double as dancers and acrobats and puppeteers of every shape and style. The less expository second half finally begins to deliver on emotional weight especially in the relationships between Chihiro and her dragon friend Haku (Kotaro Daigo), and with Mari Natsuki doubling amusingly as evil Yubaba and her nicer twin sister Zeniba. But the composer’s haunting woodwind writing plus sweetly sentimental repeated melodies still work wonders, especially in the melancholy scene in which Chihiro simply sits forlornly on a train seat against a projected backdrop and worries.
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