Japan has been having a moment recently: everyone and their dog seems to be there on holiday, and the West End has been enriched with gigantic bouncing puppets (My Neighbour Totoro) and sexy dragons (Spirited Away). Now, if ever, is surely the time for this almost-epistolary murder ballad.
Tsugumi Ohba wrote the manga in 2003, Takeshi Obata drew it, and since then it’s hard to count the offshoots: video games, light novels, not to mention the much-hated American Netflix series — 30 million copies sold worldwide couldn’t lie. Hovering very much like Ryuk (a Shinigami; more on him later) between East and West, HoriPro, Trafalgar Theatre Productions and Pinnacle Productions (along with the Barbican and 16 other associate names) hope that after its Tokyo premiere in 2015 and London concert in 2023, it will make the permanent leap into our cultural consciousness.
I try to stop my trapezius from an involuntary dismissive shrug. Ryuk, a death demon (Shinigami in ancient Shinto/Buddhism), bored with eternal life, drops his death note to earth. Picked up by precocious teenager Light, it snuffs out anyone whose name the owner inks in its pages. Vindication and vigilante justice follow as Light’s police-chief father employs a crack team, including another prestigious almost-child, L, to track down our first power-mad almost-adult, Light.
Corrupted soul, corrupted cords
Everyone comes leaping in at 100 per cent from the get-go, which is fitting considering anime/manga’s heightened style. Xander Pang as Light has a tough character arc as power corrupts his very soul, and the score corrupts his vocal cords, but he comes out well. L (Colin Ryan), across from him looking a little as if Edward Scissorhands and Mark Zuckerberg had a child, equally comes at the demanding score, stretching, cross-legged in front of his many Matrix-style computer screens.
The major demons, Telly Leung (Ryuk) and Grace Mouat (Rem), try their best at otherworldly but aren’t given much to elevate; however, Leung’s injection of crackling laughs and Mouat’s vocal serenity, especially in her duet about love with Chloe Saracco (Jerasu), are among the few semi-memorable musical moments. Stephanie Zaharis is superstar Misa Misa: visually and vocally she burns bright, but her character makes so little sense it’s hard to take her seriously, spending most of the story being fallen in love with by human and demigod alike and the rest locked up in a weirdly kinky dungeon.
The human world is conjured by Jon Bausor’s massive descending diamond balcony, with glimpses of the dripping skylines and manga colour palette proving breath-snatchingly watchable. Offices and teenage bedrooms skid out under the V, and the gods prance about above, keeping some of our attention.
A Child Catcher Ryuk
However, Sachiko Nakahara makes the bold choice to abandon the instantly recognisable Ryuk costume for a blend of the Child Catcher and an ensemble member from We Will Rock You. Rib cages aplenty across the board, so appropriately death-like. But Stephen Whitson’s directorial choice not to use scale, shadow, smoke or puppetry for these supernatural creatures makes their reappearance every day.
The schoolchildren/ensemble tumble about a bit like a Japanese Matilda, with Fabian Aloise’s choreography energetic yet rather unconnected to its setting. They whip by at breakneck speed on the thinnest lazy Susan I have seen theatrically, but throughout I kept comparing their bulk to the demons’ dearth. As with many shows nowadays, I find myself crying to the blazing London sky, “Why make it a musical?”
Ivan Menchell’s book is forgettable, as is Frank Wildhorn’s rocky-pop score, with Jack Murphy’s lyrics faring the worst. The ability to be wailing, belting and vocally demanding and still make little impression on the little grey cells is confounding. Wait, I do remember one song: my mind flickers — “Kira Kira kiraaaa”, a repetition of Light’s public moniker, a Japanese mangling of the English ‘killer’. The shoulders are back again.
Dark beckoning, flattened
Shinigami invite humans towards death, especially inclining them to suicide. The manga is steeped in Japan’s complex relationship with the act and drenched in dripping crimson, along with folklore. The creatives here have flattened all that dark beckoning into an almost family-friendly (tween?) production whose focus is love and justice, with insipid and flatpack musical numbers and some vibrant visuals. Another case of music and international meddling mars the magic, I’m afraid.
Death Note: The Musical
Barbican
Thu 30 July – Sat 12 September 2026
