>
My Neighbor Totoro (Barbican Theater)
Verdict: Super cute
Rating: ****
Amazing (Soho Place Theater)
Verdict: Nice Neil!
Rating: ***
For pure, turbo-charged, off-the-Richter scale, sigh-inducing spectacle, you won’t be able to beat the adorable new family show from the Royal Shakespeare Company.
It is based on Hayao Miyazaki’s cult animated film about a family in 1950s Japan who moves to the countryside to be near the mother who is recovering in a hospital.
The unique selling point of the 1988 film was the giant forest-dwelling ‘Totoro’ creature that helps four-year-old Mei and big sister Satsuki deal with their mother’s illness.
The big cuddly Totoro is therefore also the big draw in the show of Phelim McDermott.
Although we first meet his Minion-like offspring nervously running in and out of holes, their giant ancestor is like a hairy beached whale that Mei jumps on like a bouncy castle. The Barbican crowd will melt like lollipops in the sun at the sight.
To watch, it sure is great. The puppet show performed by a predominantly Japanese troupe wearing black beekeepers’ suits is a ballet in itself.
We start in the family’s new haunted house with flying ‘soot sprites’ that look like fluffy spiders. But alongside the hulking and smiling Totoro, a huge inflatable illuminated ‘cat bus’ with searchlight eyes swings by to transport Totoro and the girls wherever they want.
The unique selling point of the 1988 film was the giant forest-dwelling ‘Totoro’ creature that helps four-year-old Mei and big sister Satsuki (pictured together) deal with their mother’s illness.
The show has charm to burn, thanks in part to a single storm of doll chickens on the neighbor’s farm. And Joe Hisaishi’s score mixing Japanese pop and Western classical traditions is performed by a treetop band silhouetted by a huge rising sun, while ethereal serenades sung by Ai Ninomiya cover lengthy scene changes.
The problem is that for nearly three hours there is much more splendor than plot.
McDermott’s production is bathed in childlike wonder and Tom Morton-Smith’s script is limited to dopily anodyne dialogue.
We also have to give up hope of anything like complex characterization thanks to an impeccably good-natured father (Dai Tabuchi) and his two girls – the bubbly young Mei (a rubber ball Mei Mac) and her thoroughly responsible older sister Satsuki (Ami Okumura Jones).
McDermott tells in the program that the story has a different, not ‘patronising’ view of time. But adding an extra hour to the film’s length makes this otherwise delightful show an ultra-slow-release sugar rush. Nobody asks for car chases (although we sort of get one), but am I the only one who wants to be patronized by something shorter?
Almost as beautiful is Marvelous, a staging of the life of Neil Baldwin, the man of the world from North Staffordshire. Outside of Stoke City Football Club, the Alex Ferguson lookalike’s life story is best known for his autobiography and the BBC film starring Toby Jones.
Almost as beautiful is Marvelous (pictured), a staging of the life of the North Staffordshire man of the world Neil Baldwin
Born with learning disabilities in 1946, Baldwin longed to study theology at Keele University and become a priest, but became a self-proclaimed fixture at the university, meeting and greeting students for over 60 years. In between, he ran to and from the circus as a clown and was named Stoke City’s kit man.
It’s a bold move by producer Nica Burns to use Theresa Heskins’ non-star production to open the 600-seat Soho Place theater.
More sophisticated shows will follow, but until then Michael Hugo’s “Nello” may even be better than Toby Jones in the film, as he leads the other six actors through his life story, proudly showing off a British Empire Medal on a loose gray suit, blissfully unencumbered by reality.
Suzanne Ahmet is just as good as Neil’s devoted mother.
Thanks to her and his underappreciated devotion to the Church, Baldwin believed himself capable of becoming prime minister.
And who would doubt him based on the current evidence?
Local hero
Minerva Theatre, Chichester
Rating: ****
JUDGMENT: Nostalgia party
You might be tempted to dust off an old wooden tennis racket, clip a sweatband around your head, and play air guitar to Mark Knopfler’s folksy reinvention of Bill Forsyth’s cult film.
It’s about Texas oil boss Mac, who hopes to buy a sleepy village in the Western Isles to build a refinery for his boss (played by Burt Lancaster in the 1983 film).
The musical adaptation was first seen in Edinburgh in 2019 and was intended to move to London’s Old Vic in 2020.
We all know what happened next but I suspect Covid has been kind to the show as Daniel Evans’ farewell production in Chichester before he takes charge of the Royal Shakespeare Company next year is a big improvement. That’s also thanks to a wonderfully warm turn from American Gabriel Ebert as Mac and Paul Higgins as local fixer, Gordon – roles originally played by Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson.
With the crowd gathered around a ‘thrust’ stage, it’s easier to be part of the remote Scottish community whose dreams of selling their souls seem destined to be fulfilled. Frankie Bradshaw’s set design is also more high-tech, looking like a chrome space station beaming with sunsets and northern lights.
But the stage also transforms neatly into the story’s battlefield beach, as the movie’s famous red phone booth, powered by 2p pieces, sits at a sharp angle nearby.
Although it’s played here with all the buzz of an electric Ceilidh, I’m not sure Knopfler’s score fully owns the story.
Yes, there is that signature Knopflerian twang inherited from The Shadows. And yes, there’s entertainment in songs like We’re Going To Make A Killing, plus the melancholy of (Only) Rocks And Water, not to mention the Celtic vocals of I Wonder If I Can Go Home Again (reminiscent of the Irish folk song A man you don’t meet every day).
But the story’s assets remain not only the heartwarming plot, but also the sharply drawn characters deftly translated by David Greig. Ebert is a handsome Texan, dressed in a sharp silver suit and fine moccasins. Controlled by a beeping wristwatch, his need for change (and not just on the phone) is as believable as his presence on stage.
Higgins is also in his element as the versatile local accountant, lawyer and hotelier trying to close a deal. And while Hilton McRae is everyone’s fantasy of an elderly beachcomber as old as the peat bogs, eco-resistance is delivered more formidably by Lillie Flynn as the kind of feisty Glaswegian most safely found in fiction.
Not just good for eco-warriors and Scottish nationalists, it’s a Highland reel for nostalgics of every stripe.
The Lavender Hill Mob
Everyman, Cheltenham
Rating: ***
Verdict: Lumbering laughs
The 1951 crime series, starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway, was one of the most successful Ealing comedies, and now Phil Porter has adapted it for the stage. Miles Jupp plays Henry Holland, a Bank of England employee responsible for transporting gold from the Royal Mint to Threadneedle Street, while Justin Edwards is Alfred Pendlebury, who owns a foundry that makes inexpensive souvenirs.
When Holland meets Pendlebury, he sees his chance to remain a nonentity for 20 years of faithful service, but to lead a new life, along with money, in Rio de Janeiro. There we find him as the play begins on New Years Eve 1949, drinking with other expats at the Union Club when the mysterious Mr Farrow (Guy Burgess) walks in.
In the film, Holland tells Farrow how he got to Rio, but Mr. Porter – who throws in some good jokes, including a corkscrew about a French seagull – uses the clever framing tool to have Holland’s fellow partygoers act out his story.
They tell the complicated story of a staged bullion theft, melting them down into paperweights from the Eiffel Tower, Holland and Pendlebury that went to Paris to fence them, then had to track down the English schoolgirls who were accidentally sold gold instead. of lead versions, and a chase through war-torn London with a stolen police car.
And this is where the stage version, directed by Jeremy Sams, is a bit of a hit. In a crime hairdresser, there must be some cackling, but Mr Jupp and Mr Edwards’ howls are more like trudging on Francis O’Connor’s fussy set. Other cast members, including Tessa Churchard and Victoria Blunt (as revelers acting as the men’s henchmen) are a bit more light-hearted, but the production, with two upbeat and talented protagonists, needs more spice to reach the comic heights of the original.
Until October 22, then touring until February 18, 2023 (lavenderhillmobplay.co.uk)
Veronica Lee