Death Note: The Musical's limited Barbican London run begins next week: all the details
If your name's not on the list... you should be thankful
Death Note: The Musical is coming to London in less than a week. And as it’s a fairly short run, we think it’s time for a refresher on what the show is all about.
The Barbican Theatre plays host to Death Note: The Musical from 30th July to 12th September.
Gallery seats and a smattering of lower desirability ones elsewhere start at £50, rising to £165 for the best of the best stalls spots.
There’s decent availability throughout most of the run, barring the official press night on 11th August, including a handful of tickets for the very earliest of performances.
Death Note: The Musical is an adaption one of the more famous manga series. It’s about a teenage boy, Light, who finds a notebook with dark powers. When someone’s name is written in the book, that person will die.
Spooky stuff.
Across two hours 20 minutes, we get a retelling of the story in musical form, pitting Light against his nemesis Detective L.
It’s far from the first adaptation of the source material. Netflix is currently streaming the two-series animated show and the 2017 live action movie version. The original manga came out between 2003 and 2006 in Shonen Jump magazine.
This musical has deeper roots than you might guess too. It was originally staged in Japan in 2015, and had its first UK version performances in 2023 at the London Palladium, on 21st and 22nd August, before jumping to the Lyric theatre for just a few more September 2023 shows.
While it didn’t quite receive quite as widespread reviews and coverage as we hope to see for this more substantial 2026 run, the enthusiast press were, well, mostly enthused about that earlier English-language staging.
WhatsOnStage called it a “a West End thrill ride” in its 4-star review.
“The rapidity and punchy brutality of the storytelling creates a thrill-ride ending that combines fantastical shocks with edge-of-the-seat twists – earning a big thumbs up along the way.”
The Love London Culture blog even went as far as to give the show a full five-star review.
This new 2026 run is not a straight re-treat of the 2023 season, though. It’s directed by Stephen Whiteson with choreography by Fabian Aloise, while Nick Winston headed up direction and choreography in the earlier run.
We don’t think you need to be a manga fan to be hooked in by the dark-themed story of Death Note, which helped elevate the other adaptations as picks to recommend to folks who don’t devour the stuff every week.
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