Review: MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO, Barbican Theatre

If the Royal Shakespeare Company thought that getting the blessing of Hayao Miyazaki for a stage version of his celebrated animation masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro would be tough, that is as nothing compared to the challenge posed by the film's fanbase, who love, really, really, love it. Take it from me - I'm one of the disciples myself. And? Well, read on.

Mei, a feisty four-year old, and her elder sister, Satsuki, have moved from Tokyo with their father to the countryside to be nearer to their mother who is convalescing in a sanatorium. They delight in the simple joys of rural life, make new friends and ache with the gap in their family (set ten years after the firebombing of Tokyo, there's a more general loss that informs the movie). Then Mei picks up some acorns that appear to be left for her, falls down a hole in the giant camphor tree at the bottom of the garden and enters a world of ancient spirits - and encounters a neighbour she never expected to meet.

Everything turns on creating a world that isn't just true to the film's physical but also its psychological environment. We get a glimpse of what is to come with the soot spirits dashing about in the girls' new house (Tom Pye's production design is extraordinarily fungible) animated, if I may use that word, by on-stage puppeteers dressed in black.

It's also a delight to see how brilliantly Mei Mac inhabits the character of Mei, her anime face of frustration is just perfect, so too her stomping (super work from movement director, You-Ri Yamanaka). We also get the rickety vehicles that always seem to find a place in Ghibli films and Kimie Nakano's costumes that don't just remind you of the film, but capture a sense of time and place that is at once specific but also universal.

But I would be lying if I were to claim I was in a state of anything less than total excitement at the thought of a real live Totoro (you know what I mean) before my very eyes. With Basil Twist, Jim Henson's Creature Shop and Mervyn Miller (a holy trinity of the puppetry if ever there was one) expectations were sky high - and they were exceeded! Wow is too small a word, indeed, silent awe was the initial reaction around the house. What a magical moment - and there was more to come!

The psychological element was, in many ways, even more difficult to achieve. The film is sometimes criticised for its somewhat slight plot, but the transition to stage (and maybe the fact that Covid which is still on our minds) has created more jeopardy, Ami Okumura Jones vesting Satsuki with a real desperation as she searches for her younger sister. In Tom Morton-Smith's adaptation, I felt something of the relationship between Seita and Setsuko seeping in from Studio Ghibli's harrowing Grave of the Fireflies. Perhaps the only thing missing from the film - a properly hard edge - is very much present in the theatre, enhanced by the legendary Joe Hisaishi's score and Ai Ninomiya's ethereal singing.

The acid test for Phelim McDermott's production is the iconic bus stop scene, one of the greatest in movie history, the moment Setsuko learns to trust her sister and discovers the true nature of Totoro and what it can summon. I could watch that scene every night of the run and not tire of its beauty, nor of its underpinning of one of the film's central messages - that we must trust the mysteries of nature, give them protection and they will, in turn, protect us.

So, did this show meet the challenge posed by this Ghibli ultra? It did - and then some.

My Neighbour Totoro is at the Barbican Theatre until 21 January

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

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