Turning anime classic My Neighbour Totoro into theatre: ‘It’s got to be its own thing on stage’

“I love an impossible stage direction,” says Tom Morton-Smith, grinning broadly. The playwright’s previous headscratchers for creative teams have included a nuclear explosion (Oppenheimer) and an instruction to explain the concept of mass using a custard fight (The Earthworks).

He has landed on his feet with his latest show. My Neighbour Totoro, based on Studio Ghibli’s much-loved 1988 Japanese animation fantasy film, is chock-full of incredible moments. The story of two small girls, Satsuki and Mei, who move to the country with their father to be near their convalescing mother, has a fairytale quality. They encounter mysterious beasts and strange occurrences. There’s a giant, furry cat-bus which flies through the air; a huge tree shooting out of the ground overnight; multiple soot-sprites that dart around the house. And, most spectacularly, the discovery of Totoro: a huge, benign and rotund spirit who is ancient protector of the forest. That’s a lot of impossible stage directions.

It’s also a considerable challenge for the writer himself. Hayao Miyazaki’s original film was hailed by many reviewers as a masterpiece and is so popular that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new stage premiere, produced with the film’s composer Joe Hisaishi, broke the Barbican’s box office records when tickets went on sale. The gentle beauty of the film lies not just in its exquisite animation but the quiet sympathy with which it enters the world of the two sisters, particularly four-year-old Mei who brings a small child’s curiosity to the world and the creatures she encounters.

“What I love so much about the film is its stillness, its softness,” says Morton-Smith. “All the characters are good, there are no villains, they’re just good people dealing with circumstances. And [I love] the way the film conjures atmospheres that you can just live in for a bit, whether it’s following a snail crawling up a plant or a frog next to a pond.”

On screen, that gentle pace is spellbinding. But isn’t it the antithesis of theatre? Doesn’t live drama thrive on plot, conflict and intrigue? Morton-Smith admits that adapting what is essentially “not a plot-driven piece” to a new medium, while keeping its spirit, is challenging: “It is daunting because it is a beloved film and it’s so beautifully made. But it’s got to be its own thing on stage.”

He describes his task as “translation as well as adaptation”. He’s expanded several scenes, brought forward some characters and increased the dialogue. But he adds that, although the story doesn’t conform to conventional expectations, it does have defined sections and a narrative journey.

Morton-Smith and the creative team were determined to find a way to celebrate the meditative atmosphere of the film. “There is still a plot — it’s just not what you’d expect. And I love that it doesn’t adhere to what we would say are traditional story beats: that you can have moments where Granny’s just talking about how you pick vegetables. Theatre does atmosphere incredibly well but doesn’t often let the audience sit in it.”

Finding a stage language for this delicate story has meant drawing together a high-powered international team. Hisaishi has been closely involved and his original score will be played live. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop is building the puppets, designed by Basil Twist, and Phelim McDermott, expert in improvisation and puckish invention, is directing. The show is produced in collaboration with English theatre company Improbable and Japan’s Nippon TV.

“It’s unlike any project I’ve ever worked on,” says Morton-Smith. “We have huge teams working on this — puppet makers, puppeteers, music, set. It’s a really massive project, but it should feel graceful on stage.”

To that end, all the show’s elements have been integrated from the outset. Large sections of set have been in the rehearsal room throughout, with the RSC’s studio theatre turned into a puppet workshop to evolve the puppets alongside the action.

“The script didn’t even get brought into the room until the second week,” says Morton-Smith. “So it feels like a very organic process. But there’s no other way to do it: everything’s got to come to the boil at the same time.”

Puppetry has come of age recently on the UK stage and My Neighbour Totoro follows on from hits such as the National Theatre’s War Horse, His Dark Materials and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, as well as RSC’s 2021 show The Magician’s Elephant, which had a life-sized pachyderm. Earlier this year, the seven puppeteers who manipulate the tiger in Life of Pi jointly won Best Supporting Actor at the Olivier Awards.

That award was a turning point, recognising not only the skill in puppetry but how integral it is to the drama. In Totoro, the puppets will help recreate some of the film’s magic moments, but they are also central to the role of imagination in the story.

Puppets build on that childlike ability to make objects come alive through play. In Totoro, the transformative power of a child’s imagination fuses with ancient Japanese beliefs in animism: the understanding that objects, places and creatures possess a spiritual essence.

“There’s an overlap in the way the puppeteers think and traditional Japanese ideas of animism,” Morton-Smith says. “And a puppet comes alive not only through the puppeteers’ movements but through the audience infusing it with life . . .

“It’s very important to our Japanese producers that the kids [onstage] can see the magic but none of the adult characters can. But we in the audience are allowed to see it because it’s inviting us to be children.”

Like all good fairy tales, My Neighbour Totoro operates on several levels. For children it may be simply a magical story; adults will see environmental messages and metaphors about coping with change and illness. But, for Morton-Smith, it’s important not to spell out what’s wrong with the mother or explain too much: we see the situation through the children’s eyes.

“There are various ways you can read it and I think it depends on how old you are and what your life experience is when you come to it,” he says. “For very young children, they’re real magical creatures . . . for older kids there’s the coming-of-age story and the worries about taking responsibility and growing up. And for adults, the creatures are the kids’ way of coping with things. That’s what makes the film, and hopefully the play, so moving for the adults that watch it.

“I started working on it before the pandemic,” Morton-Smith adds. “But suddenly the themes of these very young children coming to terms with their mother’s illness and the idea of mortality hit slightly differently. And the messages of it — of gentleness, of kinship with nature, of parents trying to do their best under difficult circumstances — it feels like that’s kind of needed now.”

Barbican Theatre, London, October 8-January 21, barbican.org.uk

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