In October 2022, London's Barbican Theatre hosted the world premiere of My Neighbour Totoro -- a stage play based on Studio Ghibli's titular family-friendly masterpiece. Although the production has found success in the UK, producer Kenichi Yoda initially feared that it would fail to live up to the legacy of the original film.

In a recent interview conducted by Empire, Yoda, along with other key members of My Neighbour Totoro's production team, revealed the biggest problems they faced while adapting director Hayao Miyazaki's story. The show, which was put together by the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Jim Henson's Creature Shop, uses inventive puppetry techniques to bring Totoro's imaginative world to life on stage. However, Yoda and production designer Tom Pye encountered many challenges while developing the puppets for Totoro and his equally iconic feline companion, Catbus.

In My Neighbor Totoro, the titular forest spirit and Catbus are both massive characters large enough to easily transport child protagonists Mei and Satsuki from one location to another. For Yoda and Pye, the first major problem they faced was faithfully representing each character's enormous size to the audience. "I was pushing for them to be bigger. It was me going, 'I think [they] should fill the stage, and the Catbus as well,'" stated Pye. "I thought it needed to be a really theatrical gesture; it needed to take your breath away." However, Yoda's initial design for the Catbus fell far short of Pye's vision. "We weren't able to make the Catbus 3D. It was just [lying flat out] on stage," he explained. "And so we were facing this failure. There was no way [that we] imagined that this was going to be a success."

There were also a few setbacks during the show's conception phase. The idea for My Neighbour Totoro originated from the mind of Joe Hisashi, who has served as Ghibli's primary composer since the studio's creation. While Hisashi initially conceived the project as a musical with lyrical performances from the main characters, he ultimately scrapped this idea, opting instead for an instrumental-based score performed by a live orchestra. "Joe thought that it might not be appropriate for the characters to sing their internal emotion," Yoda stated.

To resolve Totoro's puppetry-related issues, the production team turned to Basil Twist -- a renowned puppetry designer known for his work on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. With Totoro's large stature in mind, Twist constructed a huge inflatable prototype of the character. "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 to prove it.'" To represent Totoro's other nature spirits, such as the famous soot sprites, costume designer Kimie Nakano created a new technique that she refers to as "Kazego" or "Wind Spirits."

While on stage, the Kazego puppeteers control their characters with long wires while wearing dark blue clothing, which helps them partially blend into the background. According to Twist, this technique stylistically aligns with the elusive and mysterious nature of Japanese spirits, which are believed to exist everywhere while also being invisible to most humans. Similarly, the soot spirits -- in addition to the show's titular hero -- only appear before Mei and Satsuki at certain special moments. "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 stated. "In Japanese [culture and] lore there are spirits everywhere, and you can feel that throughout the Ghibli films."

My Neighbour Totoro is currently gearing up for its 2025 debut. The show is due to begin a new 34-week run at London's Gillian Lynne Theatre on March 8. Tickets are available on the Royal Shakespeare Company website.

Source: Empire