"Howl's Moving Castle". Burton Taylor Studio

There’s something fantastical in the air at Magdalen College this summer.

Last week, in the college President’s Garden, Magdalen Players staged Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantasy novel Orlando. This week, Magdalen students venture further afield, to the Burton Taylor Studio. And once again, the play is an adaptation of a classic fantasy novel, this time Diana Wynne Jones’ children’s magical adventure, Howl’s Moving Castle.

Of course, Howl’s Moving Castle has already been adapted, famously and gloriously, into one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most trippy and spell-binding animations. It’s easy to see the appeal of Wynne Jones’ book for Miyazaki: it’s a magical kingdom with steampunk styling, peopled by witches and wizards who subvert the traditional fairy-tale ‘crone’, instead finding roles for young heroes and heroines in these conventionally villainous characters. Miyazaki had been there before, with Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle was a gift-wrapped golden opportunity for his boundless visual imagination. Its appeal lies, almost entirely, in the kaleidoscopic punch of its imagery.

What does this mean for a theatrical adaptation?

Is it simply taking a book you know and love, and turning it into a play? If so, how do you set about doing that? Do you turn the characters’ words into speeches, translate the plot into action on the stage, and let the party commence? Or is there a special alchemy to be wrestled from the process? In gestating great theatre, somehow you have to get with birth the mandrake root that lies, knotted and dormant, within those pages.

Neil Bartlett explained at the Q&A for Orlando that he has to see something irresistibly theatrical yearning to get out of the text. It has to turn into a play, rather than the play being an acted version of the original book.

In the case of Howl’s Moving Castle, the challenge is immense. Miyazaki was able to breathe life into it with literally thousands of enchanting and intriguing pictures. What can you do with a virtually bare stage? How can you make the audience forget this was ever a book, and see it purely as theatre?

I don’t have the answer. It could be something extraordinarily physical (or metaphysical). It could be something that finds an hour of pure theatrical expression in just one tiny aspect of the original work. I remember Steven Berkoff adapting Kafka’s Metamorphosis with explosive dynamism on a set made of girders around which he swung and clambered with inhuman glee. The key was: the idea took precedence over the text.

Adapter and Director Miriam Waters has tackled Wynne Jones head-on, and imported almost the whole novel onto the stage. It is done with obvious affection, immense dedication and admirable commitment. It has the feel of a book that Waters loved as a child, and whose copy has been read so many times that the pages are soft with repeated fingering. It’s the most well-intentioned play I’ve seen this term. But its love for the novel is also its undoing. The characters effectively take us through the entire story, but their attempt to bring it to life has the opposite effect, because it feels, for the most part, like what it is: a book on a stage. If you are a lover of the book, and know it inside out, this play may give you everything you want. If not, you may feel slightly adrift.

There are impressive literary influences at work here: Alice in Wonderland (another book whose picaresque plot rarely survives translation to the stage) is much in evidence, with our innocent young/old heroine encountering curious creatures on her adventures, all of whom seem to understand the rules of their land better than she does. (There is even a family of Hatters, just to drive the point home.) The Tempest is present in the spirit of fire-demon Calcifer who, Ariel-like, is contracted to his wizard-master and given his freedom at the end. There are also shades of The Wizard of Oz in heroine Sophie’s search for a way back home, and Howl’s quest to regain his heart. There are even overtones of Rick and Morty in the sight of a mad magician leading his innocent follower through a crazy universe only he truly understands. And the spirit of John Donne hovers in the background, with metaphysical quotations sprinkled throughout.

At the same time, Waters has inspired a talented cast to give all they have, from beginning to end of this show (which, at 90 minutes, is long for the BT Studio). Hafeja Khanam, as Sophie, is on stage for every one of those 90 minutes, and her astonishing energy is the beating heart of the production. Erin Campbell is Wickedly funny as the Wicked Witch of the Waste. Kaiya Collins burns with a cold fire as Calcifer, and David Weeks somehow contrives to look almost exactly like the scarecrow in the Ghibli adaptation while bouncing on one leg. On the technical side, lighting, sound and music are atmospheric and effective.

In a week when most English students are finishing their Finals, this show gets a straight alpha for effort. Sadly though, it’s just too ‘adapted’, and is hamstrung by its devotion to Diana Wynne Jones. Waters clearly has earnt the respect of her team. I’d just love to see her show less respect for the original novel.