My Neighbour Totoro theatre review — five-star staging of a much-loved film at the Barbican

My Neighbour Totoro

Barbican Theatre, London

It’s one of the most keenly anticipated dramatic entrances of the autumn. But it’s not a Hollywood star or a rare comeback. It’s a huge illuminated furry bus with a Cheshire cat grin that soars weightlessly through the air, screeching to a halt with a flick of the tail and a twitch of the whiskers, all the better to survey the ever so slightly alarmed audience.

This stunning magic-lantern cat-bus is just one of many ingenious solutions to the problem of transferring Studio Ghibli’s beloved My Neighbour Totoro to the stage in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production. Hayao Miyazaki’s original 1988 film uses the infinite resources of animation to tell the tale of two small girls in 1950s Japan, who find solace in the natural world and its spirits to help them through a distressing period when their mother is gravely ill.

The stage responds with its number-one asset: the audience’s imagination. The result — in the hands of playwright Tom Morton-Smith, director Phelim McDermott, designer Tom Pye, lighting designer Jessica Hung Han Yun and puppeteer Basil Twist — is a gorgeous, uplifting tribute to the link between theatre and the imaginative realm of children’s play.

Everything, very deliberately, is analogue. The mysterious little black soot-sprites that greet Mei, 4, and Satsuki, 10, as they arrive in their creaky new home are tiny mop-heads, darting around the walls at the hands of their black-clad operators. This same army of watchful puppeteers brings us the cat-bus, Totoro’s capricious friends and the forest spirit himself: a gigantic, unnervingly toothy fluff ball who fills the vast height of the Barbican stage. They also deliver birds, butterflies, gossipy chickens, a greedy goat and rows of sweetcorn that seem to lean in solicitously as a crucial telegram arrives at the family home.

There’s a constant sense of movement, the show whisked forward by gliding screens and Will Stuart’s delicate orchestrations of Joe Hisaishi’s music, played live by a band perched in the trees. McDermott dusts it all with an air of mischief, including small, deliberate gaffes as reminders that this world springs to life courtesy of the puppeteers and our own willingness to join Mei and let our imaginations animate nature.

At the heart of the story is fear: two girls scared for their mother, a frazzled loving Dad, quietly caring neighbours. They are precisely and warmly drawn, with Mei Mac and Ami Okumura Jones both outstanding and moving as the funny, redoubtable Mei and the more troubled, serious Satsuki. Morton-Smith increases that emotional weight slightly and judiciously expands the dialogue and a few characters, but otherwise the narrative remains faithful to the film.

It’s not perfect: in fact, the show’s shortcomings derive from that fidelity. The pace chafes sometimes on stage — it could be shorter, meatier and freer. But this is a tender, remarkably beautiful family show that extols kindness and leans into the film’s emphasis on a world as seen through a child’s eyes.

★★★★★

To January 21, rsc.org.uk, barbican.org.uk

The Band’s Visit

Donmar Warehouse, London

Totoro is just one of the pieces about family, love and loss currently on the London stage. In The Band’s Visit, David Yazbek’s delicate 2016 musical, based on Eran Kolirin’s 2007 film, a chance encounter between two groups of strangers brings unexpected emotional riches. Here, an Egyptian police band — the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, to be exact — decked out in stiff, deeply impractical powder-blue uniforms, fetches up in a remote Israeli town because of a linguistic blunder at the bus station. They’re supposed to be playing a high-profile gig at an Arab cultural centre in Petah Tikva; instead they find themselves plonked down outside a sleepy café in the desert — to the considerable bemusement of the locals. The point, deftly unfolded, is that this error quietly does more to draw these Egyptian and Israeli citizens together than any official engagement.

“Welcome to nowhere,” sing the locals, as they warn their unexpected visitors that this is a place where nothing happens. And that is borne out in the story, which is low on incident, high on atmosphere. The band members bond with their hosts through food, reminiscence and, above all, music. The lonely café owner and the starchy conductor share a beautiful and sorrowful evening out and oh-so nearly get together (wonderful, drolly contrasting performances from Miri Mesika and Alon Moni Aboutboul).

Threaded through the evening are multiple examples of heartache. A smitten youth hangs out, hour after hour, by a silent payphone, waiting for his sweetheart to ring; a young couple, exhausted by early parenthood, snap at each other; a widower remembers meeting his wife.

The skimpiness of the piece does undermine it. Most characters have little depth and some are barely sketched at all, such as the tired wife (Michal Horowicz) and the lovesick lad (Ashley Margolis). The latter does eventually lead a joyous song, but it feels frustrating to have him sit by a wall all evening.

Then again, the fragmentary nature of the show is part of its point. Tiny changes shift the dial for characters: a boy plucks up the courage to talk to a girl; the phone finally rings; a clarinettist soothes a baby. Michael Longhurst’s production rises to this, conjuring a spellbinding, dreamy atmosphere on Soutra Gilmour’s bare-bones set and letting the music soar around this intimate space.

And it’s the music that makes this show. Yazbek deploys a rich, intoxicating mix of Arab music, klezmer and jazz, which lifts this collection of vignettes into a fragile meditation on hope and connection. The band, sitting on an unfinished wall of bricks, are superb, lighting up the evening with soulful trumpet, cello or violin, lyrical oud, haunting clarinet and exhilarating drumming.

★★★☆☆

To December 3, donmarwarehouse.com

The Boy With Two Hearts

National Theatre, London

The Boy With Two Hearts, by Hamed and Hessam Amiri, has acquired a sobering new topicality since premiering in 2021. Based on the brothers’ own story (and adapted from their book by Phil Porter), it follows an Afghan family forced to flee in terror after the mother dares to speak out against the oppression of women. The show arrives at the National Theatre against the backdrop of protests in Iran. And while it’s told with a spry, witty touch and inflected by the mischievous energy of the family’s three young boys (played here by Shamail Ali, Farshid Rokey and Ahmad Sakhi), it never loses sight of the underlying horror of having to run for your life.

The Amiris’ situation is further complicated by the condition of the oldest son, Hussein, who desperately needs specialist medical help for a heart defect. We follow them on a hazardous trip across Europe, hidden in lorries, squeezed into car-boots, freezing in grim apartments.

Amit Sharma’s production has a fable-like quality, with the cast of five narrating the tale and acting out all the parts in brief tableaux. It’s a limited format, but it’s vividly delivered and drolly designed, with settings evoked by illustrated subtitles. And while the story is peppered with details specific to this family — the favourite dinner, the sibling arguments about football — the rows of jackets hanging silently above the stage remind us of all the other untold, stories.

★★★☆☆

To November 12, nationaltheatre.org.uk