After five years in the making, the stage adaptation of director Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 Studio Ghibli animation Spirited Away premiered on March 2 at Tokyo’s Imperial Theatre. The play, which will run until July, celebrates the 90th anniversary of the Toho Company, which distributed the film.
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The adaptation is written and directed by John Caird, honourary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who is best known for the 1982 premiere production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance in London. The British playwright’s foray onto Japanese stages started in 1987 with Les Misérables—also at the Imperial Theatre, and which has run at the same location ever since.
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