Japan has spent years bringing anime series, and movies, to life via live-action stage plays. Series such as Naruto, My Hero Academia, Beastars, Mobile Suit Gundam, and too many others to list have all received stage plays in recent years. Luckily, anime fans had the opportunity to witness Ghibli’s Spirited Away on Hulu, but fans in the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to see the performance live next year.
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Spirited Away remains one of the biggest animated films released by Studio Ghibli, not just thanks to its amazing box office haul, but also being the only movie from the animation studio to win an Academy Award for “Best Animated Feature”. With this year seeing the release of Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, How Do You Live, it will be interesting to see how this latest project will stack up in comparison to this magical movie when it comes to its box office and critical acclaim. While the live-action play did hit theaters in North America, a tour for the performance has yet to be announced.
Spirited Away UK
Toby Olie, the puppet designer for Spirited Away’s live-action stage play, spread the news that the performance would be making the rounds in the United Kingdom next year. Taking place at the London Coliseum from April to July, specific dates have yet to be revealed.
Recently, we here at ComicBook.com had the opportunity to chat with the director of Spirited Away’s live-action stage play, John Caird. In discussing the adaptation, Caird listed the toughest challenges he faced in bringing this Ghibli classic to life, “Well, I suppose the challenges are obvious and the biggest challenge was putting the bathhouse on stage. But my choice of collaborators, I suppose I was very lucky in that I got people for whom that sort of challenge is their bread and butter. Jon Bausor as designer and Toby Olié as the puppet master, and Jiro Katsushiba, the lighting designer, they all collaborated together with me to create the world of the bathhouse. And then finding the right way of using puppets to create all the more extraordinary non-human characters. That was the other big challenge, I suppose.”
Do you want to see a Spirited Away world tour? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Studio Ghibli.
