My Neighbour Totoro transfers to the West End: how the RSC turned a cult cartoon into a must-see theatre show
With the news that My Neighbour Totoro is transferring to the West End, opening at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in March 2025, here’s the behind the scenes story of how the original production came together.
When tickets for the stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro went on sale at the Barbican last autumn, demand was so high that it broke the venue’s record for sales in a single day. Such was the clamour that it proved even more popular than Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, put on at the venue at the height the actor’s Sherlock fame.
Those who have never heard of Totoro or indeed Studio Ghibli – the Japanese animation studio behind that and many other hand drawn cartoon feature films – will be asking the question: why is this the hottest ticket in town?
Essentially, Ghibli is one of Japan’s great cultural exports and, as the ticket sales show, it has legions of devoted fans around the world. Co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki, three works to come out of the studio are in Japan’s top five top grossing films worldwide. The Oscar-winning Spirited Away from 2001 made more at the box office globally than Disney’s 1967’s The Jungle Book or 1998’s Mulan.
Ghibli references have appeared in The Simpsons, Toy Story 3 and the comic book pages of The Sandman and X-Men. Some of the studio’s animated characters have even been dubbed in English by Hollywood stars such as Gillian Anderson and
