My Neighbour Totoro at a glance

Show
My Neighbour Totoro
Venue
Gillian Lynne Theatre, West End
Address
166 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5PW
Nearest station
Covent Garden (5 min walk); Holborn (5 min); Tottenham Court Road (10 min); Temple (10 min)
Genre
Family theatre with puppetry and live music (RSC stage adaptation)
Running time
Approximately 2 hours 30 minutes, including one 20-minute interval
Age guidance
6+ (under-4s not admitted; under-16s must be accompanied)
Dates
19 March 2025 – 30 August 2026 (extended twice; final London run)
Press night (Gillian Lynne)
20 March 2025
Price range
From £17 (typically £17–£180)
Adapted from
Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 Studio Ghibli animated film
Adapted by
Tom Morton-Smith
Director
Phelim McDermott (Improbable Co-Founder)
Puppetry design
Basil Twist (built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop)
Executive Producer / Music
Joe Hisaishi
Awards
6 Olivier Awards 2023 (most of any production that year); 5 WhatsOnStage Awards

Expert Review: My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne

4.8
★★★★★

LTH Expert Rating

Reviewed by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 11 May 2026.

The Verdict

There is a particular challenge in adapting Hayao Miyazaki to the stage. His films are not driven by plot in any conventional sense — My Neighbour Totoro is famously a film in which not much happens, for stretches at a time, before something quietly miraculous occurs and the show acquires its emotional weight by sleight of hand. A literal stage adaptation could so easily have failed. The Royal Shakespeare Company's production, first seen at the Barbican in October 2022 and now in its third London year at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, doesn't fail. It triumphs. Six Olivier Awards, five WhatsOnStage Awards, two record-breaking Barbican seasons, an extended Gillian Lynne run now in its second year — every indicator suggests this is the most successful family theatre production of recent UK theatre history. The acclaim is deserved.

The reason it works is Basil Twist's puppetry. Twist, the celebrated American puppeteer behind the New York productions of The Petrushka Variations and the Met Opera Hansel and Gretel, has designed Totoro himself in multiple scales — from soot-sprite-tiny to a massive sleeping form Mei first encounters under the camphor tree — all built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The Catbus is one of the most extraordinary single puppet sequences staged in the West End in years. But the production's deeper achievement is Phelim McDermott's direction: he refuses to speed up Miyazaki's pace, refuses to over-explain, and trusts the audience (including children) to do the emotional work. The mother's illness, the sisters' tentative friendship, the quiet awe of the first encounter with Totoro — none of it is sentimentalised. The result is one of those rare shows where everyone in the auditorium, from 6-year-olds to grandparents, is quietly moved at exactly the same moment.

What Makes It Special

  • Basil Twist's puppetry. Multiple Totoros (different scales for different scenes), the Catbus, the soot sprites, the smaller Totoros, the spirits of the forest — every puppet in the production is exquisitely designed and operated. Twist won the 2023 Olivier for puppetry design; the work has been called the best stage puppetry in the UK since War Horse.
  • Phelim McDermott's direction. McDermott, the co-founder of Improbable (the company behind such varied work as Shockheaded Peter and the Met's Akhnaten), brings his characteristic mix of disciplined craft and trusting-the-audience to the material. The pacing is unusually slow for a Western family theatre show — and the show is all the better for it.
  • Joe Hisaishi's music, performed live. The original film score by Joe Hisaishi — one of Japan's most beloved film composers — is performed live by a small ensemble with Ai Ninomiya as the on-stage Singer. Hisaishi himself is Executive Producer of the production, an unusual level of source-material involvement that has clearly shaped every creative decision.
  • The visual world. Tom Pye's set design uses revolving stages, projection, scale changes and lighting (Jessica Hung Han Yun, Olivier winner) to recreate the look of the film without ever attempting literal copying. Kimie Nakano's costumes won the Olivier for Best Costume Design. The visual world is properly Miyazaki — pastoral, slightly melancholy, full of small wonders.
  • The hospital scenes. One of the production's quiet achievements is the way it handles the sisters' mother's illness — the hospital scenes are gentle, undramatic, but emotionally precise. Parents in the audience tend to feel these scenes more than the children do, which is exactly how the film treats them too.
  • A tonal triumph. The show manages to be genuinely joyful, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny (the soot sprites, the Catbus), and quietly heartbreaking — sometimes within the same sequence. Very few family shows attempt this range, and fewer succeed.

You'll love Totoro if you...

  • Are a fan of the Studio Ghibli film, or any Miyazaki work
  • Have children 6+ who would appreciate quieter, more contemplative family theatre
  • Appreciate world-class puppetry — this is some of the finest in the UK
  • Want to see the year's most decorated production while you still can
  • Are looking for family theatre that doesn't talk down to its audience
  • Enjoy live music as part of the theatrical experience

It might not be for you if you...

  • Have a child under 4 — they will not be admitted
  • Have a younger child who needs sustained action — the show's pace is deliberately gentle
  • Prefer plot-heavy musicals or big song-and-dance shows
  • Are unfamiliar with Studio Ghibli's particular tone and might find the slower passages frustrating
  • Are sensitive to themes of family illness — there are hospital scenes
  • Want something obviously "fun" rather than quietly profound

Best for

  • Studio Ghibli fans
  • Families with children 6+
  • Puppetry enthusiasts
  • Multi-generational outings
  • Anyone wanting world-class family theatre
  • School trips (ages 7+)

Not the strongest fit for under-6s, audiences who prefer fast-paced musicals, or anyone wanting conventional plot-driven theatre.

Critical Reception

My Neighbour Totoro has received among the most consistently enthusiastic critical receptions of any UK theatre production this decade. The Barbican premieres in 2022 and 2023 were near-universally five-starred; the 2025 Gillian Lynne transfer was confirmed as a triumph by the critics returning to the production. Six 2023 Olivier wins from nine nominations (Best Entertainment or Comedy Play, Best Director, Best Costume Design, Best Set Design, Best Lighting Design, Best Sound Design) remain the most by any production in a single year. Five WhatsOnStage Awards followed. Verified star ratings from major UK publications:

  • The Times ★★★★★
  • The Guardian ★★★★★
  • The Telegraph ★★★★
  • Time Out ★★★★★
  • The Observer ★★★★
  • Daily Express ★★★★
  • The Stage ★★★★★
  • Evening Standard ★★★
  • WhatsOnStage ★★★★★
  • Financial Times ★★★★

Source: published reviews of the Barbican (2022, 2023-24) and Gillian Lynne (2025-26) productions. Average critic rating across major UK publications: 4.5★. The Evening Standard's three stars represents the only major qualified dissent in an otherwise overwhelmingly positive critical reception across four years.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in My Neighbour Totoro?

The plot of My Neighbour Totoro is simple by Western family theatre standards. There is no villain. No quest. No race against time. The story takes its time, observes small moments closely, and finds emotional resonance in the unexpected. This is faithful to Miyazaki's original film, which has the same structural quietness.

The arrival

Tatsuo Kusakabe moves with his two daughters — eleven-year-old Satsuki and four-year-old Mei — to a country house in rural Japan. The year is roughly 1958. They are moving to be closer to the hospital where the girls' mother Yasuko is convalescing from a long illness. The house is old, dusty, slightly tumbledown. The first scenes establish the family dynamic — Tatsuo gentle and slightly distracted, Satsuki responsible and protective of Mei, Mei small and curious and brave.

The soot sprites and the camphor tree

As the girls explore the old house, they discover the soot sprites — small black creatures that scatter from the corners when the children look at them. These are puppets operated by visible puppeteers in black, and their first appearance is among the show's most-loved sequences. Granny, a neighbour, tells the girls that the soot sprites only live in houses where children are happy. Outside the house stands an enormous camphor tree, the home of the area's protective forest spirit. The girls meet Kanta, a local boy their age.

Mei meets Totoro

One day, while Satsuki is at school and her father is working, Mei follows a small mysterious creature into the undergrowth and tumbles into a clearing at the base of the camphor tree, where she finds the sleeping form of Totoro — a giant, ancient forest spirit, furry and soft, with extraordinary teeth and tongue. He is sleeping. Mei climbs onto his stomach and falls asleep too. When she wakes she is back at the house and the creature is gone. Her father and sister listen carefully but don't quite believe her — though Tatsuo, in one of the show's most quietly moving moments, takes her to thank the camphor tree for hiding her.

The bus-stop scene

The most famous sequence in both film and show: Satsuki and Mei are caught in heavy rain at a country bus stop, waiting for their father. Mei falls asleep on Satsuki's back. After a long, patient silence, Totoro materialises next to them at the bus stop. He is unfamiliar with the concept of an umbrella; Satsuki, polite, gives him one. Totoro is delighted by the sound of raindrops on it. After a long pause, the Catbus arrives — a cat that is also a bus (or vice versa) — and Totoro climbs aboard. The Catbus departs at speed. Their father's actual bus arrives moments later.

Mei's disappearance

Towards the end of the second act, a telegram arrives at the house: there is a problem with Mei and Satsuki's mother in hospital. Mei, frightened and overwhelmed by what this might mean, decides to take corn from the garden to her mother herself, and sets off on foot. By the time Satsuki and the village realise Mei is missing, she has been gone for hours. The villagers search. Satsuki, desperate, runs through the fields and eventually finds her way to the camphor tree, where she calls on Totoro for help. The Catbus appears. It takes her to find her sister, and then both girls together to the hospital window where they leave the corn and watch their mother sleeping safely.

The ending

The mother is going to recover. The family is going to be together. The Totoros — Catbus, Granny, the soot sprites, the camphor tree itself — fade back into the world of childhood imagination from which they emerged, with the suggestion that they were always real and always there, and that the children's belief in them is what made them visible. The show ends quietly, with a sense of the world being slightly more magical than it was before.