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There have been so many London stage productions based on movies now that there is almost nothing from cinema that you’d be surprised about them turning into a live show. If you did want to play that game though, one of the ones that you might think would never survive the transition would be Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful 1988 animation My Neighbor Totoro.

It’s not that it is a cartoon per se, this has certainly never stopped those folk at Disney putting something on stage, or indeed on ice, before. Although so much of the attraction is in the drawing style with Studio Ghibli and this story is very strongly linked with the charm of this medium. No, it is more that it involves the most magical, and quite large, fantasy creatures that you’d think it hard to replicate it under a proscenium arch. This is kind of the point of animation, it does not have the limits of other mediums, and if you try to replicate it in a different form, even as live action film, it loses something. (Although Disney have stubbornly refused to see this.)

All of this being the case though, the RSC in partnership with the Improbable Theatre Company, original composer Joe Hisaishi and puppetry masters Basil Twist and Mervyn Millar, have totally pulled it off. The same sense of wonder, magic and lyricism that is at the heart of the film also exists here and there is undoubtedly a thrill at all of this happening in front of you, for real, in the same room.

As a film nerd, the problem I often have with shows based on movies is their failure to replicate the moments I loved on screen. This was a real disappointment with Back to the Future The Musical which had a distinct lack of skateboards and Catalan Sheepdogs. Also, sometimes it is hard to watch someone else play a part that is so strongly defined by another actor. Surprisingly this wasn’t an issue with Back to the Future but was with Aladdin, To Kill a Mockingbird and When Harry Met Sally which briefly played at the Theatre Royal Haymarket back in 2004.

With regard to the staging of the key scenes from this famous Ghibli film they’ve not gone the easy route here, clearly deciding if they can’t put all of My Neighbor Totoro in then it won’t be My Neighbor Totoro. My main questions beforehand were how they would replicate the ten foot Totoro in the theatre. They have deliberately not released any photos of this, cameras were also banned in the auditorium, and it is good that they have saved this treat for ticket holders. In the end I suppose they managed this in exactly the way they were always going to, albeit magnificently. The cat bus on the other hand is a proper surprise.

The comparative casting is not such an issue here. No disrespect to the voice work of the then eleven and seven year old Dakota and Elle Fanning (from the 2005 dub version that allowed the English speaking world to catch up with the genius of this movie) but they are no Robin Williams, Gregory Peck, Meg Ryan or Billy Crystal. (This is the release that lost the translated title its letter u which is delightfully but pointedly put back in before the curtain rises here.) Still though, Satsuki and Mei will be very familiar to many visually which could have been a challenge. The lead actors fill these roles perfectly though and special mention has to go to forty one year old Mei Mac who may not convincingly capture the physicality of a four year old but does completely nail the physicality of Miyazaki’s depiction of four year old, which is actually what was required.

The most successful screen to stage adaptations, shows like Once and Tim Minchin’s criminally underseen Groundhog Day, manage to do their own thing with full appreciation of the different medium. What is so wonderful about the RSCs My Neighbour Totoro is that it manages to do Hayao Miyazaki’s thing with full appreciation of the different medium, and that is harder than they have made it look.

My Neighbour Totoro is playing at The Barbican until 21st Jan. I’d be surprised if that is the end of it but I said the same about the aforementioned Groundhog Day which ironically didn’t keep playing on repeat like it should have done. You’d better try and see this now just in case these enchanting forest spirits don’t reemerge after this point.