When it was announced that the live stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away would be sending a filmed version to North American movie theaters, I purchased my tickets so fast that I had my pick of any assigned seat at my local multiplex. The amount of space that the 2001 crown jewel of Studio Ghibli occupies in my brain has probably rewired it entirely, keeping me closely in touch with the 10-year-old child I was when I viewed it for the first time, so of the four available showings brought stateside, I attended three. I may never forgive myself for having missed the first night of screenings. I asked my partner over breakfast why he thought that the work of Studio Ghibli, but especially Spirited Away, had woven itself so tightly into my inner fabric, and found his answer agreeable enough: because the work reminds us of our own childhoods. My annoying habit of spontaneously bursting into tears during certain cues in the film’s score regardless of where I am and what I’m doing has always felt like a typical response to having my inner child suddenly jolted awake, a strange mix of awe and great fear. 

Spirited Away: Live on Stage had to take on the challenge of telling a story of childhood using a cast made up entirely of adult actors and puppeteers. It’s the most faithful recreation of any piece of animation I have ever seen adapted into live-action reality, following the script as if it is a bible, but the story on stage isn’t just about childhood. Spirited Away: Live on Stage is also, perhaps even more so, a fable about the service industry. Instead of the world of hospitality acting as a setting as it did in the film, hospitality defines the entire world, as the bathhouse Aburaya built on stage felt like a place I had always known, but this time, as an adult. The biggest change from Spirited Away to Live on Stage has nothing to do with the script, but is an enormous tonal shift due to the fact that you can see so many more human activities and facial expressions onstage that you can’t otherwise portray in animation. It makes for a bathhouse that is magical for the same reasons a beloved place of hospitality in our real world is, where the magic is the smoke and mirrors painstakingly maintained by the workers. 

Hayao Miyazaki’s animated world is colorful and opulent, and filled with bizarre, otherworldly spirits, so I hard certain expectations for the set design and costuming that were overturned almost immediately, as the bathhouse set itself is a singular rotating room and series of changing ladders and balconies. Any twinge of disappointment in the bathhouse reveal was quashed as it becomes apparent during the opening fanfare that actors would be using their bodies and likeness to serve as living props or tiny creatures. It wasn’t until I noticed the humans lurking among the wood, moving their bodies just enough to suggest that this building was alive, that the personification of the bathhouse began to feel like an organism made up of many smaller workers. My beloved DC9 Nightclub back home also feels alive when the building is empty, and shares the feature of multiple floors with their own distinct characteristics. 

The 10-year-old protagonist in Spirited Away is a surly, nervous little girl named Chihiro Ogino, and she makes for the perfect lens to explore this world through. When the story begins, she and her parents are exploring what appears to be an abandoned theme park, until they eat too much and are transformed into pigs, leaving Chihiro to fend for herself in the spirit world. A human among gods and spirits, Chihiro is first told that she’s a weakling who doesn’t belong, in an act of discrimination that has a shade of gatekeeping. It’s true, the spirit world is tough work where humans rarely thrive, and bathhouse workers spit the word “human” at her the same way I’ve disparaged a non-nightlife worker by calling them a “daywalker.” I entered the service industry as a teenager, but only went in full time at the age of 22, feeling much like a child myself in the chaotic world of nightclubbing.

Chihiro is portrayed during some performances onstage by Kanna Hashimoto with other nights by Mone Kamishiraishi, (it’s customary in the Japanese theatre world to split roles as there are so many performances) and while both were fantastic, Kamishiraishi’s performance was something remarkable. Her Chihiro comes across as deeply uncomfortable and awkward in her own body, constantly bunching and pulling at her oversized t-shirt. I’ve seen looks of bewilderment on the faces of many first-time service workers, and have probably delivered enough of those blank stares myself, much to the annoyance of veteran coworkers. 

A highlight from Act I is also an iconic scene from the film, with a revered River Spirit arriving at the bath house disguised as a dripping, putrid, spirit of muck and filth. Chihiro and her assigned supervising partner, Lin, are being bullied, and find themselves assigned to his care while the patrons and staff watch from above in amusement and disgust. It’s an act of hazing, something I’d experienced in many iterations of as a “baby bartender,” but coupled with a bottle of Jameson instead of medicinal bathwater. What a rite of passage! In both iterations of Spirited Away, we are treated to a spectacle when Chihiro’s bravery, determination to prove herself, and ingenuity brings her to a major hospitality victory. She discovers that this lump of stinky goo is stopped up with something solid, and pop! Out flows decades of man-made garbage and pollution, revealing the powerful River Spirit that was struggling to escape, and he flies out the door leaving nuggets of pure gold in his wake. There’s an explosion of color and joy among the staff, and the cast bursts into an ecstatic, choreographed dance of celebration- and approval. Kamishiraishi is astounding as her version of Chihiro stumbles through the first half of the dance, laughing and trying to learn the moves, before joining the rest of the cast in perfect synchronization with the most euphoric smile. The feeling is something I remembered from the late nights dancing to Robyn with my old co-workers. The feeling is something that is desired above all else in the service industry in one form or another: validation. 

From the moment she enters the bathhouse, Chihiro must earn the respect of her peers who have all been working in hospitality for what could have been hundreds of years. She first meets Kamaji the Boiler Man, a spider spirit that takes the appearance of a wizened grandfather with six long, seemingly infinite legs. He’s the ultimate “back of house” employee: routinely under appreciated, overworked and overtired, and carrying the entire structural function of the bath house in his arms as he powers the boilers that provide hot water. Tomorowo Taguchi and Satoshi Hashimoto play the voice and main body of the boiler-man, and has a team of four puppeteers packed closely at his side to serve as additional arms. Kamaji and company even sing about their work together, in an expression of the musical trope of a “Job Song” that establishes the weariness of many veteran bath house workers. We’re given more moments onstage than in film with Chihiro’s surrogate big sister, her supervisor and partner, Lin. Both Miyu Sakihi and Fu Hinami fill the two-part roles as Chihiro’s mother in the prologue, and later on, bring the tough-love attitude that Lin uses to motivate her younger charge. She’s the bath house equivalent of the bar auntie, the long time employee who is dealing with back pain while putting up with the newbie’s menial bullshit, but is always the first to lend support when needed, but with a side of attitude. 

More background bathhouse workers are given additional time to showcase the inner workings of Aburaya. The work of the “slug ladies” is made more apparent, as these women in silky robes tango with and seduce the gods in their care. The managerial staff at Aburaya expands from a foreman and his assistant to a crew of three, giving the actors more room to play with each other in that Three Stooges kind of way. The kitchen staff is often frantic and hysterical, with their food runners unable to hide their nerves in front of important guests, but nobody seems to mind in this universe built on whimsy. At the very top of the Aburaya hierarchy sits the witch Yubaba, a sorceress with a harsh, punishing affect. In the film, her greed is made apparent as her main motivator when we see that she lives in an ornate, enormous, top-floor penthouse apartment while her underlings sleep in dormitories down below. With a stage set that is sparse in comparison, though, Live on Stage must depend on the performances of the actresses to give a dimension to the character without the aid of materialism. 

The result of this gamble is what led me to have an epiphany about the industry parallels in the first place. Live on Stage takes the classic character of Yubaba and turns her into the kind of Prima donna role that actresses of a certain prestige would fight for, a diva without competition. Both actresses deserve their flowers for creating a stage role that completely opens up the universe of Spirited Away, a version of Yubaba that has some of the best and worst qualities of my most notable mentors and managers of the last decade. 

Mari Natsuki was the original voice actress for Yubaba in 2001, and for half of the Live on Stage performances, she reprises the role over two decades later. Natsuki’s live role is not just another variation of Yubaba; instead, Natsuki is a perfect evolution of Yubaba. This bathhouse witch relishes every moment that she is in power, with Natsuki’s deep vocal register only growing deeper as she’s aged. The stage allows her stage presence in the bathhouse to be near constant, and as she slowly surveys her domain from the highest points of the set, you get the idea that this Yubaba was a turbo-babe in her youth who has never once lost her touch. She’s the quintessential leader of her house, a mother to her oversized baby Bo, but also the mother of the staff that she holds to the highest of standards. Natsuki’s counterpart, anime voice acting legend Romi Park, is twenty years the junior of Natsuki at 51-years-old, and this age difference lends itself to the idea that “mature” women’s stage roles cannot be painted with a broad brush. While you get the feeling that Natsuki-Yubaba has been in charge for a very, very long time, Park-Yubaba plays with her wide vocal range and frenetic energy that suggests this is a sorceress who is only just coming into her own as a leader. It feels like the difference between the confident but hurried General Manager of an establishment and the harder to shake (but quick enough to rage) Owner/Operator. Even Park’s stage makeup is drawn on a little differently, with heavier eye makeup and feminine contouring that hints at a version of Yubaba who still values her own beauty. Natsuki couldn’t care less; she portrays a boss lady with very little to prove. I couldn’t help but remembering what it was like to be 22-years-old and marveling at bartenders pushing forty with their “take it or leave it” approach to vanity. 

Above all, Spirited Away: Live on Stage is able to show the full range from heartbreak to joy that all of us in hospitality know so very, very well. When the outsider spirit No-Face is invited into a place where he doesn’t belong, he satiates his loneliness by consuming to excess, and the staff of the bathhouse enable the over-consumption in exchange for higher tips. It’s a circle of toxicity that only breaks when he becomes so sad and gluttonous that he starts to consume the workers themselves, growing larger and more horrific with every body he consumes. Surely, there’s a bartender out there who can see the metaphor here. Live on Stage shows us the growing body of No-Face by adding more and more puppeteers dressed in black to his shaking, erratic, mass of a body, and each actor added to the pack brings a growing feeling that this is a tortured individual overloaded with too many feelings he doesn’t know how to handle. For every moment of workplace misery, many of us would contend that the highs are just as powerful, and the thing that keeps us coming back around for more. The bathhouse workers, managers, and head witch are all bound by an unknowable and unbreakable code of rules that govern the spirit world, and are often making the best of their situations. Yubaba, as cruel as she can be, is also a powerful and protective advocate whose employees aren’t so afraid of her that they can’t cause constant mischief, and it’s a lifestyle tradeoff plenty of career industry workers have made at some points themselves. 

The bathhouse workers are all proud of the work they’ve done, as tiring as it may be. In my head, I keep coming back to the entire cast dancing together after the River Spirit is set free, and I can’t stop smiling. The Spirited Away I saw as a child made me want to visit this world more than any other wish I’d ever had. Spirited Away: Live on Stage showed me that I’d already been there. 

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