Barbican, London
The multi-platform phenomenon makes its way to the stage, with all the supernatural hijinks, J-horror tropes and emotional intensity intact
We know that people like to dress up for the theatre, but some of the crowd at Death Note: The Musical take it to a whole other level. Coiffured and corseted, bedecked in gauze or festooned with diamanté, it is a sight to behold, with an appreciable element going for full cosplay. This, for the uninitiated, is because the source material has emerged from the fan-cultivating world of Japanese manga, originating in 2003, and which has (in a characteristic manner) sold millions of copies in comic book and novel form, jumped to an animated TV series and feature film iterations, and even crossed over to a Hollywood treatment in 2017.
A live musical seems a bit of a sideways step, though; this kind of material doesn’t often find itself in theatres, but perhaps the success of the Barbican’s staging will see more given the go-ahead. (This is actually a second London appearance for Death Note, after a short run at the Palladium and Lyric in 2023.) You can certainly see the appeal. Shorn of the original’s convoluted digressions, and with a dilution of the original manga’s play for the teen-boy readership, this emerges as a smart, metaphysical whodunnit – or perhaps, more accurately, howdunnit – with a nice line in emotional intensity cranked up by its power-ballad musical score.
