My Neighbour Totoro: How Studio Ghibli’s Icon Made The Leap To The Stage

When My Neighbour Totoro was released in Japan in 1988, the odds were stacked against it. Such was the lack of confidence in Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘50s-set story about two young girls and a giant forest spirit that the film had been tacked onto another Studio Ghibli film — the considerably darker _Grave Of The Fireflie_s — in a bid to win over financiers.

However the power of Totoro persisted, and today it’s one of the most celebrated animated films of all time. The giant tree-dweller — with its wiry whiskers and broad belly — is Studio Ghibli’s emblem, and a much-loved character to a legion of fans the world over. So how do you even begin to translate this house-sized hero from Miyazaki’s lush hand-drawn feature into a live space in a London theatre? It turns out this task, like launching the film, was not without its challenges.

Kenichi Yoda, who heads up Studio Ghibli’s events and serves as producer of the stage play, remembers the day that tickets for My Neighbour Totoro first went on sale in 2022. He was in Stratford-Upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company — who are behind the adaptation  — and they were having trouble with another major character from the movie. “We weren’t able to make the Catbus 3D. It was just [lying flat out] on the stage,” he tells Empire, laughing at the symbolism. “And so we were facing this failure. There was no way [that we] imagined that this was going to be a success.”

"I was pushing for [the Totoro puppets] to be bigger"

The idea for a stage play came from Joe Hisaishi, the film’s composer and another studio stalwart. But the project couldn’t move forward without the blessing of his friend and collaborator of over 40 years. “Miyazaki said, ‘If, Joe, you're going to take responsibility for it, then I give you permission; it’s [entrusted] into your hands,’” Yoda remembers. Originally Hisaishi saw it as a musical. But Totoro is a film that features sparse dialogue, with audiences encouraged to bring their own interpretations to the story. “Joe thought that it might not be appropriate for the characters to sing their internal emotion,” explains Yoda.

The Royal Shakespeare Company announced that it would be helming the project in 2022, with Jim Henson's Creature Shop assisting with the puppetry. The premise of Totoro is simple; a young family — Satsuki (who’s around ten years old), her younger sister Mei and their father — move out to the countryside to be near the hospital where their mother is being treated for an unnamed illness. While exploring the surrounding forest, the sisters discover friendly Totoro, its smaller companions, and the even bigger Catbus, who can carry passengers in its body and has the ability to run along telephone wires. Many would wilt at the thought of trying to capture the sheer scale of Totoro and its otherworldly companions. “I was pushing for [them] to be bigger,” enthuses Tom Pye, the show’s production designer. “It was me going, ‘I think [they] should fill the stage, and the Catbus as well. I thought it needed to be a really theatrical gesture. It needed to take your breath away, and I want every member of the audience to be jealous that they’re not Mei climbing on top of [their] belly.”

For the creatures, puppetry designer and director Basil Twist was called upon — who, alongside a lengthy stage career, also created the Dementors in Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. The production kicked into gear during the pandemic, and so without a workforce or many resources, Twist built a giant Totoro prototype in his family’s backyard in San Francisco. “Ultimately I was like, ‘I think [they have] to be inflatable. I think that will make [them] squishy and large, but I have to test that and prove it,’” he remembers.

When it came to the broader approach to the puppetry —  which includes chickens and a cohort of mischievous soot sprites that occupy the family’s rickety new home — the team came up with a new approach. It was dubbed by costume designer Kimie Nakano as ‘Kazego’, a Japanese term for ‘wind spirits’. Like Totoro and their companions, who only seem to appear to Mei and Satsuki under certain circumstances, the puppeteers — who are dressed all in blue — are designed with the intention of being both visible and invisible to an audience. “It’s not just a way of achieving puppetry effects, but also a way of telling the story [about] this small family and these spirits around them,” Twist explains. “Even in the film we don't see all of them; in Japanese lore there are spirits everywhere, and you can feel that throughout the Ghibli films.”

"Our imaginations are always running wild"

Having grown up in Japan, Nakano consulted on the production beyond her role as costume designer to ensure cultural accuracy, from Mei’s backpack to how the family’s washing should be hung up. Yet however minute the details get, she believes that the broader themes of Totoro transcend the film’s Japanese origins, which was a major reason behind the stage play debuting outside its homeland. “It's about family and the relationship that we have with each other, and maybe that’s what we need now,” she says.

Back in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the relationship with the flat Catbus certainly felt like an omen. According to Yoda, UK audiences weren’t hugely familiar with the film, and so many were coming to the story and these characters anew. But My Neighbour Totoro broke box office records for the Barbican, its first home, in one day. Such was the show’s success that it returned for a second run in 2023, and now expands to the West End for a 34-week run. “We were surprised,” chuckles Yoda. He’s reluctant to confirm if the show’s success will lead to more adaptations of Ghibli movies, but adds: “our imaginations are always running wild.” Until then, Totoro continues to defy the odds.

My Neighbour Totoro opens at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on 8 March