The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage an adaptation of the celebrated Japanese animation feature film, My Neighbour Totoro, in a production it promises will be ambitious and spectacular.
The 1988 film became a global success after Netflix acquired the rights to 21 movies from Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation giant, in 2020. The world premiere of the stage adaptation, directed by Phelim McDermott and featuring puppets created by Basil Twist, will have a limited run of 15 weeks at the Barbican from October until January.
Erica Whyman, the RSC’s acting artistic director, said: “Adapting this deeply loved magical story for the stage is the next chapter in our longstanding commitment to making spectacular and accessible productions that see the world through the eyes of children.” She expected the show would attract “a wide range of theatre audiences as well as loyal fans of the original film”.
My Neighbour Totoro tells the story of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who move to the countryside with their father to be close to their mother who is in hospital. While adjusting to their new surroundings, they discover a fantasy world of woodland creatures and spirits, invisible to grownups. “It’s a captivating world you won’t want to come home from,” said the Guardian in its 2013 review.
Studio Ghibli – the world’s second biggest animation studio after Disney – has produced numerous acclaimed films including Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service.
The RSC’s stage version will be adapted from the movie by Tom Morton-Smith, whose credits include Oppenheimer and Ravens. My Neighbour Totoro was a “very wholesome, beautiful world that washes over you”, he said.
“These young girls are discovering nature for the first time, so there are long shots of a snail on a leaf or a fish in a stream or a frog jumping in a puddle. It doesn’t feel particularly propelled by a plot, it’s just a world you inhabit.”
Capturing that atmosphere on stage was a challenge, said Morton-Smith. Music for the stage show – created by Joe Hisaishi, the film’s original composer – is “beautiful, and the songs are really evocative and atmospheric, and they do a lot of the work of transporting us”, said Morton-Smith.
Hisaishi said the stage adaptation was a groundbreaking project. “In Japan, many people are passionate about theatre and musicals, but there are no original Japanese shows or musicals performed in the world. Totoro is a Japanese work famous throughout the world, and so this stage adaptation could have the potential to reach global audiences.
“If the story is universal – as I believe it is – it will have a global reach even if it is performed by people from different cultural backgrounds speaking different languages.”
The stage version of My Neighbour Totoro will be the RSC’s first opening “of this scale” since Les Miserables in 1985, said an RSC spokesperson. Les Mis has won multiple awards, as has the RSC’s production of Matilda the Musical, its adaptation of the popular Roald Dahl book.
