Neil Gaiman’s Coraline to become ‘dark, spangly’ stage musical

Playwright Zinnie Harris and composer Louis Barabbas’s adaptation of the novel will open at Leeds Playhouse and tour in 2025

Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novella Coraline is to be turned into a musical that will tour the UK in 2025. The children’s fable, which found a new audience 15 years ago as a stop-motion animation by Henry Selick, has been adapted by playwright Zinnie Harris and composer Louis Barabbas.

Harris fell in love with Gaiman’s dark fantasy when reading it to her children and quickly saw its potential for the stage. Over a 12-year period, she has developed the script with James Brining, artistic director of Leeds Playhouse. They recruited Barabbas, the Skye-based frontman of the Bedlam Six, to write songs that Harris described as “dark, spangly, clever, quirky and beautifully melodic”.