As an avid Studio Ghibli nerd and a lover of all things animated, I was so excited to see one of my favourite classics ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ being adapted into a stage play in London at the Barbican Theatre.
Yet translating animation onto the stage is no easy feat. I’ll admit at first I was slightly sceptical about how they would possibly go about recreating these beloved childhood characters and whether or not it would do justice to Hayao Miyazaki’s original 1988 film.
But with Joe Hisashi (the original composer from the Ghibli films) on board as an Executive producer, working in production with playwright Tom Morton-Smith and the Royal Shakespeare Company, I had faith we were in safe hands. And boy did they deliver .
