Fans of the Studio Ghibli films will be thrilled by the prospect of the Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) landmark new staging of the celebrated animated feature film My Neighbour Totoro. For those who have never heard of this at all, let's briefly fill you in.
Written by Tom Morton-Smith (Oppenheimer), the show is adapted from a celebrated Japanese 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Muyazaki. A partnership between the RSC, Improbable and Nippon TV, My Neighbour Totoro follows the story of sisters Satsuki and Mei as they are transported to a long-forgotten realm of magical beings, spirits and sprites, after moving to be closer to their ailing mother. It has different resonances for every age group: for young children the story is about magical beings, for teenagers it is a didactic coming-of-age tale, and for adults who relate to the protagonists parents the plot is about protecting the ones you love.
Celebrating the Japanese traditions
Unusually for an RSC production, 23 members of the 24-person cast are making their debut with the company in My Neighbour Totoro. ‘You never get that,’ says Ailin Conant, the shows associate director. When creating a production that focuses on markers of identity, it is often common to address social issues and complex problems in society. Sadly, it is still extremely rare for a cast of performers largely with East Asian origins to celebrate a story from their heritage in such a positive way. Representation of cultures in this way is invaluable, especially in a show that appeals to children, teenagers and adults alike.
‘Mei Mac, who plays Mei, talks about breaking the “bamboo ceiling”, and it is incredibly real,’ adds Conant. ‘This is certainly the largest Eastern and Southeast Asian ensemble that has been gathered into once place in my careers so far. We are a tight-knit community, but to have us all in one place has been really special.’
Tom Morton-Smith, the playwright commissioned by the RSC to adapt the story for stage, deemed this an essential element when creating the work. ‘We are really trying to engage with the depth and breadth of talent within the British East Asian acting and theatre community,’ he says. ‘I know that a lot of those actors end up in really depressing, urgent political work, so for them to be in something celebrating a story so joyful from that part of the world means a great deal to them, and it will mean a great deal to the audience members who share that background.’
Bringing the story to life
The production plays with two and three-dimensional worlds, with a lot of the design elements being evocative of 2D animation. The actors mirror this too, utilising high level physical theatre techniques to recreate heightened or animated versions of what four and ten-year-olds look like in animation.
Conant explains that one technique that helped the physicality of the actors in rehearsal, implemented by director Phelim McDermott, was the Wheel and Tape technique. Naturally, in lots of rehearsal processes you start off with scripts in hands, with actors trying to remember lines. With the Wheel and Tape technique, the actors create a recording of themselves delivering each line in a neutral way, and then the recording is played as the actors physically stage the scene without miming. ‘This process was very freeing, ensuring the actors were connected to their bodies very quickly. In this case it meant the way the actors move with their bodies was the focus at the start of the rehearsal process, and this element did a lot of the work in transferring the animated effects to the stage,’ Conant says.
Outside of its famous scenes, which will be instantly recognisable to Studio Ghibli fans, the Totoro story at its core is about a family dynamic, something Morton-Smith homed in on when adapting the anime to sage. ‘If you don't get that family dynamic right, the show simply would not work,’ says the playwright. Even the magical elements are made to feel grounded in reality, Morton-Smith tells me. ‘For Totoro, it was important that he was not just a fluffy animal or a stuffed toy. I wanted to make it feel like he lived in the woods – I wanted his fur to be matted and for him to small slightly of mud. I made sure the stage directions were so much more that “this cartoon character walks on stage”, it was more about building the world of the play and trying to make it feel real.’
© COURTESY RSC
Mei, Satsuki and their father in My Neighbour Totoro, The Barbican
The physicality of the puppets
One thing you cannot fail to mention when discussing this production is the puppets. They have been kept so under wraps throughout the production that no public images of them have been released while the show is still running. In the animation we are told that only the children can see Totoro and the other magical beings. This means that when the audience can see them on stage for the first time, they are made to feel that they are exclusively joining Satsuki and Mei on their adventure.
Puppets can be very difficult to stage alongside actors without looking clunky. Conant describes puppets as having a different ‘rhythm’ to humans, explaining that in Bunraku puppetry you are taught that if there are three puppeteers, the individual that is acting opposite the puppet is the fourth puppeteer. In Commedia Del Arte, we often teach students about the decomposition of movement, breaking down a reaction from a character into sections such as: I listen, I look, I react. Conant explains that this is the level of decomposition of movement that puppets are working with, so when actors are reacting to a puppet on stage this is the type of thing we need to think about.
A difference in language
One significant difference in this stage production is that it is in English rather than the original Japanese. For Morton-Smith, it was useful to transfer the story to English so the production could straddly different groups of fans. There are two camps of people who are fans of the initial production: some have watched Totoro with the dubbed American audio, which is tailored strongly for American audiences, while others have watched it in the original Japanese audio with English subtitles. This provides a small buffer for Morton-Smith, who has slightly more flexibility with the dialogue because of the lack of an existing British translation. ‘As long as I am faithful to the story and characters, the actual dialogue is up for grabs and the specifics of the texts aren't as revered by the audience,’ says Morton-Smith.
Reflecting human nature
There is a real tenderness and naivety to the production, which is something in the fabric of all Studio Ghibli stories. Recently Disney and Hollywood have been shifting towards stories without ‘baddies’, with many new releases depicting a group of well-intentioned characters muddling their way through life. Studio Ghibli has been presenting these kinds of stories to its audiences for years. There is a gentleness to the concepts of this story that is very forgiving, and that is part of its universal appeal to adults, children and everyone in between. If you create good theatre for children that isn't patronising or condescending to its audience, it will also be good theatre for adults, as clearly shown by this production.
With a sold-out run in the UK, the show clearly has the appetite for bigger audiences and an extended stay at the Barbican, with whispers of a possible Tokyo tour. It's not only promising that this uplifting story can appeal to all generations in different ways, but it's a clear sign that there is – and potentially always has been – a huge appetite for stories from different cultures, on British stages and beyond. For young audience members who may not identify with the usual pantos, Peter Pans or Alice in Wonderlands, this is an impactful commission from the RSC. To those of you who might be new to anime, this could be a sign for you to get on the Studio Ghibli train – or ‘catbus’ as it may be.
barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/royal-shakespeare-company-my-neighbour-totoro