Hayao Miyazaki’s celebrated and Oscar-winning 2001 animated classic “Spirited Away” is set to be adapted for the stage for the first time.
Tony and Olivier Award-winning director John Caird (“Les Miserables,” “Nicholas Nickleby”) will pen and direct this version which is being produced by Japanese entertainment giant Toho
and with full co-operation and support from Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
Earning $355 million worldwide, the film followed an intelligent young girl named Chihiro who becomes lost in a mysterious world of fantastic spirits, ruled over by the sorceress Yubaba.
After a series of bizarre and dangerous challenges which see her working at a bathhouse for said spirits, she must use all her wits to return to the human world.
The stage version will see two singer/actresses in the Chihiro role – Kanna Hashimoto (“Assassination Classroom”) and Mone Kamishiraishi (‘Your Name”). The stage version is targeting a February 2022 launch at Toho’s Imperial Theatre in Tokyo with plans to tour Japan and then other parts of Asia and Europe.
Source: THR
