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 Neighbor 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; apart 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 help her 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.
