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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lanre Bakare Arts and culture correspondent

Studio Ghibli’s work ‘like Shakespeare’, says My Neighbour Totoro stage show’s director

still image from stage performance of My Neighbour Totoro: a girl in a pink dress is seen in the centre of a mythical forest with trees curving around her, lit in green, blue and purple
The new production of My Neighbour Totoro (above, in 2022) will run at the Gillian Lynne theatre for 34 weeks. Photograph: Manuel Harlan/RSC with Nippon TV

The work of Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki should be considered as remarkable and timeless as Shakespeare’s First Folio, according to the director of the hit stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro, which is returning to the West End next year.

Phelim McDermott, who was behind the six-time Olivier-winning production that was last at the Barbican in 2023, said Miyazaki’s work continued to attract audiences because it dealt in the same kind of universal themes which made the bard’s work endure.

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