REVIEW: Kiki's Delivery Service, Southwark Playhouse ✭✭✭

Tom Greaves, Anna Leong Brophy and Alice Hewkin Kiki's Delivery Service

Southwark Playhouse

13th December 2016

3 Stars

Book Tickets

Once again, Southwark Playhouse’s in-house Christmas offering takes us into new territory for the festive season, providing another alternative to the usual panto tropes.  Here, we get Eiko Kadono’s 1985 story of the young Japanese witch with the enterprising work ethic.  Already filmed in anime in 1989 and then again in live action in 2014, it has also been turned into a stage musical in Japan (c.1990).  At the premiere at Newington Butts last night, Kadono was present and answering questions after the show, through her interpreter; it seems that this is the very first play adaptation.  Chris Smyrnios, a huge fan of the book and movies, had his heart set on the adaptation, and as soon agreement was reached to proceed with the production, he engaged alumni of other presentations at the venue to mount the project.

Tom Greaves, Alice Hewkin and Jack Parker

First of all, Jessica Sian was engaged to adapt the script: next came in super-hot young award-winning director Kate Hewitt.  From that point on, a close collaboration between the pair developed. Hewitt’s first recruitment was ace video designer, Andrzej Goulding, whose projections (with animation by Phoebe Halstead, and Video tech from Dan Trenchard) are one of the jewels in the crown of this event, from plants growing out of window boxes that you will swear are real, to limpid, fluorescent rain, dripping down designer Simon Bejer’s box park set (a model of swift transitions between the narrative’s many locations) – and the costuming is aptly contemporary (Supervisor, Annalisa Spezzacatene), with abundant references to the Japanese styles of the pre-mobile phone era.  Another house regular, Max Pappenheim, does the sound and music, while Elliot Griggs lights it all unfussily.  The result is the script and production we now see: at press night the adult audience found it all politely charming, but it may prove more magical to a room filled with kids.

Matthew Forbes and Alice Hewkin

The story is certainly appealing.  This tale of a young person’s first flirtation with life beyond the home is calculated to appeal to the fantasy and ambition of young hearts and minds.  To begin with, we are sort of in ‘Bewitched’ territory, with an averagely affluent middle class family having two generations of female witches, Kiki (Alice Hewkin) and mum Kokiri (Anna Leong Brophy), and a slightly bemused ordinary mortal hubby, Okino (Tom Greaves), and we see the moment when they have to let go of their lone child on her first broomstick foray into the great big world outside.  Oh, but of course she has to have a ‘familiar’, and so takes the family cat, the animesque Jiji – a model with glowing green eyes, operated – and voiced! - by Matthew Forbes.  The company movement, including plenty of broomstick flying, and puppetry direction both come from Robin Guiver.

Jack Parker

This picaresque adventure is given much fluency in Hewitt’s capable hands, lending the narrative the smoothness familiar from the novel and films.  However, arguably, on the stage, this kind of story needs just a little bit more ‘pointing’ in order to really hold the ‘ground’ it moves across.  There are many ‘moments’ that are significant turning points in the tale which might well ‘land’ more strongly were they given just a few beats more to register with the audience; in such moments, the characters can then communicate a little more of their emotional journey to us, enabling us to connect with them more powerfully.  At present, in terms of script, there are many very short scenes, and it is in the demarcation of these that the pointing of the narrative mainly occurs.  That’s fair enough, but when we can’t see people (in a blackout, for instance), we can’t bond with them.

Alice Hewkin in Kiki's Delivery Service

We can see manifold similarities between this story and many others like it.  The story of the backstory of the ingénue witch has to recall ‘Wicked’; lots of mucking about on broomsticks brings us back to Harry Potter land; a gigantic town clock mechanism takes us back to the territory of ‘Hugo’; and so on.  These touches will bring smiles of ironical recognition to the lips of practised grown-ups, especially those forced to acquire an encyclopaedic knowledge of children’s entertainments.  By the same token, those comparisons can prove slightly invidious, if they do not work in favour of the subject at hand.

Nevertheless, the general effect of this production is pleasing and there is doubtless much fun to be had with this charming addition to the holiday season.

Until 8 January 2017

Photos: Richard Davenport

BOOK TICKETS FOR KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE AT SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE