Kiki's Delivery Service, theatre review: Delightful celebration of the imagination

​There are lots of high-tech – not to mention high-price – treats designed to lure in a family audience this summer. I wonder, though, how many of them will have the determinedly low-fi charm of this delightful stage adaptation of Eiko Kadono’s bestselling Japanese children’s book about a trainee witch who learns the values of friendship, humility and not snapping one’s broomstick in a fit of pique.

Kiki (Jennifer Leong, just the right mixture of eagerness and petulance) is now 13, which means she must leave home for a year, to ‘be of use’ in a new place.

She and her faithful feline Jiji (a puppet with luminous green eyes and a magnificently languorous voice, brought to life by Thomas Gilbey) settle in a new town and start a courier service. Life lessons, along with many vital parcels, must be delivered.

Kate Hewitt’s production makes a virtue of its rough and ready aesthetic, which nonetheless manages to see Kiki airborne. A bouncy cast of six whizzes on and off, expressing the occasional qualm about witches as they go and also providing some pleasantly puzzling deliveries. Big-budget entertainment this isn’t, but rather a 90-minute celebration of the inventive and imaginative possibilities of live theatre.

Until Sept 3, Southwark Playhouse; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk