My Neighbour Totoro is a hugely successful show based on a Japanese movie made in 1988. The setting is a haunted house occupied by two little girls who encounter various creatures rendered on stage by puppets. The story has no action, danger or jeopardy so it’s likely to bore small boys and their dads. Perhaps mums and daughters will appreciate it more.
The big selling point is the puppetry whose quality varies. The naturalistic animals are done well. Cute yapping dogs, fluffy chickens scampering about, mischievous goats that steal maize from unguarded fields. The silliest creature is an orange latex cat equipped with 12 spindly legs that don’t work. It looks like a cross between a bed bug and a crippled tiger. The haunted house is infested with flying black spiders that seem to be made from tufts of armpit hair. These revolting pests look scary but they turn out to be harmless like all the beasts in this slow-moving fantasy. The whole point of a mythical creature is to wield supernatural powers and to perform deeds that amaze human beings. Not here. These deformed mutants lack any special abilities and they look like botched experiments abandoned by a mad Victorian scientist.
The main puppet, Totoro, is a cuddly koala bear as large as a campervan that likes being tickled. He has a kittenish face and rabbity ears but he’s so fat that he can’t move. In fact he looks like a 14ft-high hot-water bottle. He manages to stand up very briefly but he’s more content lying on his back, unconscious.
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