Review Roundup: MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO at the Barbican Theatre

The global premiere of Studio Ghibli's My Neighbour Totoro has now arrived on London's Barbican stage.

The celebrated 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki is brought to the stage by its original composer Joe Hisaishi in a landmark new adaptation by the RSC written by playwright Tom Morton-Smith.

This enchanting coming-of-age story explores the magical fantasy world of childhood and the transformative power of imagination, as it follows one extraordinary summer in the lives of sisters Satsuki and Mei.

My Neighbour Totoro is now playing a strictly limited season until 21 January 2023, but what did the critics think?

Gary Naylor: BroadwayWorld: I would be lying if I were to claim I was 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 their 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!

Arifa Akbar: The Guardian: The Royal Shakespeare Company's production, written by Tom Morton-Smith and with music by Joe Hisaishi (who composed the film score), is a thing of beauty in its own right which - as sacrilegious as it may sound - emulates Miyazaki's original story of two sisters who move with their father to the countryside, in postwar Japan, and see other worlds emerging out of it.

Marianka Swain: London Theatre: The show itself takes great delight in each creative solution to telling this wild and wonderful fairy tale. The black-clad ensemble of skilful puppeteers brings the soot sprites to life by dancing them around on wires, until they fly up into the sky on what looks like a nursery mobile. One side of a bus is whisked on - with the lead performer, holding up the driver, deliberately overshooting it to give the audience a knowing chuckle. They weave between being invisible and visible, filling that liminal space and suggesting that there are ever-present spirits supporting us: an extremely comforting notion right now.

Nick Curtis: Evening Standard: The story could use more jeopardy, more darkness and more of the monsters. The stage adaptation has been guided by the film's composer, Joe Hisaishi, whose score here sounds sing-song and inoffensive, and includes lyrics sung in Japanese and English by Ai Ninomiya. Mei's disappearance is accompanied by a song called Where Has She Gone?. Adapter Tom Morton-Smith loyally transposes the off-key weirdness of the original and also its deeply conventional take on childhood.

Theo Bosanquet: WhatsOnStage: Many years in development, this theatrical incarnation makes innovative use of puppetry, designed by Basil Twist and the Jim Henson Company, to bring its cast of magical spirits and more earthly creatures to life. The staging is genuine jaw-on-the-floor stuff, with a team of visible puppeteers (several gags are made about this) flitting around to manifest everything from tiny, fluffy soot sprites to the proscenium-filling main character, whose first appearance is greeted by an ovation.

Sam Marlowe: The Stage: Asleep in the forest, a snoring mountain of shuddering, shaggy fur, claws and whiskers twitching; or standing over the girls in a rainstorm, a protective sentinel, Totoro is weirdly, wonderfully lovable, with his piano-key teeth and giant, lolling tongue. Just as jaw-dropping is the Cat-Bus - a peculiar hybrid of moggy and motor vehicle, here a massive inflatable ginger tom with headlight eyes (you know it's a tom, because it even has a neat pair of testicles where the exhaust should be).

My Neighbour Totoro is at Barbican Theatre until 21 January 2023

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan