Death Note: The Musical is a remarkably faithful adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's classic mid-’00s Death Note manga, which concerns Light Yagami, a Tokyo high school student who (via a capricious death spirit) comes into possession of a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. Frank Wildhorn, Jack Murphy and Ivan Menchell's adaptation is largely drawn from the first half of the series and simplifies the story in various ways. But it’s doesn't take any major liberties, other than the fact they’re all singing now.
This is potentially good news for fans of the series, of which there are clearly a lot: I caught the show the Monday after press night and it was rammed, with a noticeably large number of boy tweens in attendance (the age advice is 12-plus and I’m not sure I’d let my boy tweens watch it but let he who casts the first stone etc).
If you’re not a pre-existing fan of the series you may well – like me! – spend the whole time with your jaw on the ground wondering why the hell this is all happening and why the characters are all like this.
It was always going to be an unconventional musical, but the retention of the bizarre, generally sociopathic, undoubtedly manga-accurate behaviour of almost every major character feels like a missed opportunity to do something more interesting and tragic with this story. I would have liked more liberties, please.
A gleefully bombastic, tightly drilled, visually impressive rock musical
The issue for me is that by 20 minutes in, Xandar Pang’s Light has become a malevolent sadist. His initial offing of various high profile global criminals has now degraded into him ranting about how he’s a god and becoming increasingly focussed upon bumping off the officers and agents who have been assigned to uncover his identity. Cue lots of scenes of him cackling away in his bedroom in the company of Ryuk (Telly Leung), the darkly whimsical shinigami (death spirit) who gave him the book in the first place.
Meanwhile, the police – headed by Light’s father Soichiro Yagami (Paolo Montalban) – have deduced something’s up and have drafted in L (Colin Ryan), an enigmatic detective who has concealed his real name from the world. As with Light he appears to be of school/university age, and also as with Light he appears to be madder than a box of frogs, with Ryan giving him proper Heath Ledger Joker vibes in his bizarre interactions with the Tokyo police.
Nobody gets more annoyed about having to listen to people sing about their feelings than me. But Stephen Whitson’s stylish, bombastic production could probably do with people singing about their feelings more. Or at least sing about their feelings in a less superficial, less ‘ha ha I’m bonkers’ way. Manga and musicals are different art forms and you’re already inherently changing the DNA of the story by adding songs. The opportunity was certainly there to make Light a deeper, more complex, more tragic protagonist: after all, he is nominally trying to act nobly. He could fall slowly into darkness. Instead he dives off the deep end with an enthusiasm that makes Macbeth look like Ghandi. Equally the business with pop star Misa Misa (Stephanie Zaharis) falling for Light sight unseen… is just bonkers, and also arguably misogynistic in terms of how it all plays out.
I’m not saying the manga had to be changed more for the musical. But the absence of meaningful emotional development and the lack of interest in capitalising on the obviously tragic elements of its lead characters’ stories leave its two-hour-20-minute runtime feeling flat emotionally. Indeed, the most ‘human’ characters are Ryuk’s fellow shinigami Rem (Grace Mouat) and Jerasu (Chloe Saracco) – the former gets the show’s most heartfelt songs because nobody else really has any feelings to speak of.
Don’t get me wrong: I found this gleefully bombastic, tightly drilled, visually impressive rock musical very watchable. It has a magnificently flexible avant-industrial set from Jon Bausor, and kinetic, beautifully stylised choreography from Fabian Aloise. The story is certainly never boring. I hope the boy tweens had a great time. But there’s a better, braver, more human musical in Death Note.
