Just don't get any fatter or they'll eat you

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

Spirited Away : The Coliseum

About 18 months ago, I saw the adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro at The Barbican and was absolutely blown away by it - so when I saw Spirited Away (another Hayao Miyazaki creation) coming to The Coliseum, how could I resist?!? I'd also never been to The Coliseum, so was interested to see that that was like.

Well, the first thing I have to say it's a very big theatre, but that's possibly not what you came here for - what was the play like?

In a lot of ways, it's more of the same when compared to MNT - the scenery, the costumes and (particularly) the puppetry on display here are all absolutely top quality, capturing the overall vibe of the film pretty well (the live orchestra playing the original film score obviously help here too). And whoever was playing Chihiro (it could have been any one of four actors apparently) carries the play and has an awful lot of work to do - and she did it very well indeed. 

But... 

...I'm really not sure it needed to be three hours long (especially seeing as how the film is only two hours long and also considering how uncomfortable my seat was). I actually considered leaving at the interval because I wasn't expecting to see anything new in the second half - there was possibly slightly more plot, but I'd struggle to say it totally justified my continued presence. The play features an awful lot of travel from point A to point B via convoluted routes (and back again) which I think it could quite easily have dispensed with - it also featured a lot of spotlight work, which felt like a waste of the stage space available.

I also (maybe foolishly) wasn't expecting it to be in Japanese - the surtitles worked well, but I did get the impression I missed stuff as my eyes had to keep moving off the stage to try to work out what was going on (sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn't!).

As I previously stated my seat was very uncomfortable - this appeared to be specially reserved for the back row, so that's something to watch out for. I also struggled to see a lot of the stage - I appreciate that comes with the cheap seats, but it felt worse here than in most places, possibly because this really is a BIG theatre (it's the largest in London - apparently in 1908 it hosted a cricket match). And I was high up as well, as you can tell from the random quote for this write-up which comes from the woman in front of me approvingly noting the presence of a balcony rail to her husband because "nobody wants to see anyone fall to their death". There's no arguing with such logic, I tell you.

Back to the play, whilst there was certainly a lot to like about it, there was just maybe too much of it to love it all. My mild disappointment certainly appeared to be in a tiny minority though - the cheers and standing ovation at the end went on for quite some time (the guys sat next to me had come over from Paris and were very happy to have made the trip).  I have to admit to much preferring My Neighbour Totoro though - if you want to see some dazzling theatre, it's coming back to London next year and I really can't recommend it enough.

People, Places & Things - An impressive central performance
The Duchess (of Malfi) - Most peculiar