When I was 10 years old, a primary school friend lent me 1-12 of the Death Note manga. I read through it ferociously, loving every mechanical twist and turn. It was my introduction to anime and manga, but also my introduction to "real" media, books/movies/games that required a little maturity to interface with. I've thought about Death Note very little since then, until now!
When I first saw an advert for this adaptation, I was extremely sceptical. It almost sounded like a joke, how could you make songs out of this? Would it be "so bad it's good"? And having seen it now, I wouldn't say my scepticism was entirely warranted, but I wasn't on the wrong track. The musical does have a lot going for it. The stagecraft is maximalist, constantly switching scenes using large moving parts, office interiors, floating catwalks, school courtyards assembled on tracks. The songs are fine, for the most part, very typical musical theatre faire. The actors are great singers, and sell every song very well.
All that being said, I just couldn't get on with the way this "adapts" Death Note. It felt far less like an adaptation and more of a thematic retread, a compilation of best moments. I appreciate that they had to attempt to squeeze the entire story into such a short runtime, but unfortunately leaving out all the juicy mechanical details of the plot, the exact Yagami manoeuvring and L deduction, strips the story of much of its interest. When it's very quickly revealed that L suspects Misa, you are left wondering why. They simply don't have enough time to get into every nuance of every plot detail, and being a musical doesn't help this at all. It's hard to communicate more than one or two ideas with a single song, let alone plot complexity/rules explanations. Instead, they stick to very classical musical stuff, the songs depict simple a simple emotion, or one particular event. For example, L's introductory song essentially just says "the game has begun" (its chorus) and not much else. Sticking to this classical musical music style also doesn't allow it to communicate much through the emotional force/instrumentation/timbre of the music itself, beyond extremely basic chord progression-y feeling (but perhaps a frustration I have with musicals in general).
Then there is the heavily truncated ending, which again contributes to this feeling of the "adaptation" being more of a greatest hits record. Near/Mello and all that are completely skipped over. L dies and then Ryuk kills Light, knowing the rest would be boring anyway. Not only does this remove the interesting detail that Light's downfall was because of his trusting of Mikami, but it just feels so meh. Like Ryuk just decides to end the thing because they're out of material, or whatever. They don't save the ending reveal that all humans, not just Death Note users, cannot go to heaven or hell, they just have Ryuk state it outright earlier on in the play. I don't know how much clearer it can get that they are just playing the hits! The humour in this also didn't tickle me at all. Completely fandom/tumblr jokes, the kind of stuff you'd expect to hear in the background of a "comedy" lipsync tiktok.
There is a lot to say about the themes of Death Note, its politics and the way it plays with capital punishment, the perception of criminals, the police, collective consciousness etc. I think I am able to think more critically about the way these things are depicted now than when I first read it. However, this musical did not particularly inspire these thoughts. The musical really struggles to allow the audience to grapple with any of the ethical quandaries or magical rules because it has to so quickly get through the whole thing!
I don't want to be completely negative. This still engrossed me enough while watching that I didn't really feel the time go by. It was a fun evening, but I just think it wasn't a meaningful or particularly interesting adaptation of a very interesting manga. Speaking of, it is an adaptation of the manga. I'm sure they'd be dropping this classic all the time if it was a direct adaptation of the anime, along with this classic. They would at least reference the motifs in the musical music, but they don't, and I think that's because it's an adaptation of the manga, so they don't have the rights.
p.s. misa as a brunette? what are we doing