My Neighbour Totoro: How the cult classic finally made it to the stage

“We were trying to build a house that a soot sprite would like to live in,” says Goro Miyazaki. The director and architect – and son of Studio Ghibli’s revered founder Hayao Miyazaki – is sitting on the floor of a traditional 50s Japanese house, his knees crossed against the tatami floor. It’s a quiet space, but there are echoes of life in every corner: the pantry is stocked, the desk drawers stuffed with pens and colouring books, and a pair of children’s geta sandals rest on a boulder outside. Although you can’t see the family that lives here, you wouldn’t be surprised if they suddenly came tumbling through the door. But there are also stranger, more mystical reverberations in the air. “If you can feel the presence of soot sprites within this house,” continues Goro, gesturing at the walls, “we would regard that as a success.”

We are in a real-life version of the house from My Neighbour Totoro, tucked away in a tranquil corner of Nagakute’s Ghibli Park. The site has been labelled a ‘theme park’ for Studio Ghibli megafans, but that feels misleading; there aren’t really any rides or shops in this theme park, or suited-up characters signing autographs. Instead, the sets of almost every Studio Ghibli film – including Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Home Delivery Service – are all reconstructed in mindblowing, fully functioning detail. In the case of My Neighbour Totoro, this means an authentic family home from 1955, with rotating seasonal wardrobes and kitchen cupboards you can poke through. Everything, down to the glass in the windows, has been meticulously sourced and built with materials true to the era.

The original 1988 version of My Neighbour Totoro follows the story of university professor Tatsuo and his two daughters Satsuki and Mei, who move to the Japanese countryside and encounter a series of mysterious creatures in the forest. Despite being both fictional and animated, the character’s ghosts feel present in the Ghibli Park house: Tatsuo’s office is notably lived in, stacked with precarious towers of 50s archaeology books and scattered with trinkets, shells and jumbled scrolls. “The mess is symbolic of the father because he’s not an ordinary person, he’s not well-organised. But because he is that kind of a person, he can understand what his daughters have met in the forest,” says Goro, speaking through a translator. “There are other Ghibli characters who have an unorganised, messy room. In a sense, the people who live in that kind of room have the child in their heart.”

After visiting Ghibli Park, you realise how daunting it must be to bring a story like My Neighbour Totoro to the stage. How do you even begin to translate this much care and detail to the theatre? When a story is this fantastical, boasting big furry monsters, soot sprites and a flying cat bus, is it even logistically possible? Yet The Royal Shakespeare Company has somehow managed to pull it off: this month, their adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro opens at the West End’s Gillian Lyne Theatre, following two record-breaking sold-out runs at London’s Barbican in 2022 and 2023. The original film – which has become one of Studio Ghibli’s most well-known in the West, after Spirited Away – was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with an original score by his long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi. It was the latter who helped seal the deal for the RSC by agreeing to come on board as a collaborator and co-producer, as did Kenichi Yoda of Nippon TV, Ghibli’s parent company.

Everyone who meets Hayao Miyazaki, they come back after and say, ‘I’m so tired’. He’s a type that sucks up the energy from around him... As long as Miyazaki is alive, he still has a lot of creativity bubbling up in his mind

“When it comes to the British theatre, there is an extended amount of history behind it,” reasons Goro. “I was looking forward to how this was going to be reinterpreted as a stage show, particularly from the British. Had this offer come from a Japanese theatrical company, then I don’t think we would have given the rights to it. We would not have said yes.” Yoda echoes the sentiment: “There’s a common ground between the RSC and Ghibli. Neither of them start their creative process from a commercial perspective. There is also one thing that the RSC said [in their pitch], that I really loved: ‘if the show can’t run for 50 years, then we won’t create it.’”

There’s also the looming presence of Hayao Miyazaki himself, which could have made it more challenging to secure the rights. The original creator of Totoro is a formidable genius, known for his lofty visions and perfectionism. However, he was happy to relinquish control on this occasion, putting his full trust in Hisaishi thanks to their long working relationship. “[Miyazaki] is not creating theatre. Once he starts, he gets caught up with all the details,” says Yoda. “He sees the film as a complete piece of work in itself.” There’s also the question of retirement: the director has flip-flopped on plans to give up filmmaking, and given that he is now 84, it makes sense for him to be taking a backseat on new projects. But Yoda insists that isn’t what’s stopping him from being involved. “Everyone who meets Miyazaki, after they encounter him, they come back and say, ‘I’m so tired’. He’s a type that sucks up the energy from around him,” he says, with a laugh. “As long as Miyazaki is alive, he still has a lot of creativity bubbling up in his mind.”

Aside from acquiring the rights, bringing My Neighbour Totoro to the stage came with plenty of other challenges. Firstly, there was the set: Satsuki and Mei charge around a multi-storey house, a hospital, through fields and into the depths of the forest, sometimes while riding a giant flying cat. “I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, this is completely unstageable’,” says set designer Tom Pye. The solution was to turn the original house into a giant puppet, making it easier to dismantle and repurpose. Unlike the Ghibli Park version of the Tortoro house, though, detail was kept to a minimum. “The house is like a Japanese lantern,” he adds. “It’s made of paper and wood because we wanted to puppeteer the house, so we had to simplify the house down to the sort of bare essence.” 

Then there was Totoro himself. The lovable big grey monster – the face that launched thousands of stuffed toys – was brought to life by acclaimed puppeteer Basil Twist. The result is akin to a giant mutating teddy bear, with wide eyes and a swivelling tongue, varying in size (sometimes he’s big enough to take up the entire stage, other times just a few feet taller than the children themselves). “Totoro has to be impressive, but tactile,” Twist tells me. “You have to want to touch him. You have to want to lay on his belly, so that informs the squishiness, the texture of the fur.” The cat bus, too, required careful thought: in order to get it to soar convincingly across the Japanese countryside, Twist opted for a lighter, balloon-like body. “He needed to be completely magical,” the puppeteer says, “he needed to fly.”

Then came the pandemic. Although Hisaishi had been in talks with the RSC since 2015 – he originally wanted the play to be a musical, though that idea was soon scrapped – it wasn’t until 2020 that the production got underway. Lockdown hit at the beginning of the process, which Yoda admits was “dark”, but secured “more time for creation”. Everything moved online, with discussions being limited to video calls and creativity turning more inward. Twist, for example, affectionately remembers building DIY Totoro puppets in his family home’s garden in San Francisco. “I got my family to puppeteer it and sent those photos,” he says. “It’s very somehow suited, so true to the spirit of this piece.”

The play’s eventual success is a testament to the team’s dedication and imagination. Both of these qualities speak to the founding values of Studio Ghibli, which has continued to grow in popularity despite little marketing (The Boy With The Heron notably had no trailer until the last minute) and a purposeful lack of focus on consumerism and ‘brand expansion’. The priority, instead, has mostly been on craft, an obsessive eye for detail, and an always original finished product. The RSC have created their response to that, and the results speak for themselves. The show has received unanimous critical acclaim, with many audience members being moved “to tears” by its immersive and enchanting portrayal of sisterhood – even those unfamiliar with the original story. “The great benefit of theatre is that the audience really wants to be involved, and the power of that is enormous,” says Pye. “You get a feeling that we’re all imagining this together.” 

“I’ve just been moved by how enormous this is, and how much Studio Ghibli means to so many people,” adds Twist. “I want the next phase of the play to maintain its sweetness, which is the important thing – particularly the sweetness that I had working with my family in the backyard.”

Previews of My Neighbour Totoro are currently running at London’s Gillian Lynne Theatre, with the play officially opening on March 20, 2025. Get your tickets here