Leader Weekends: Theatre Review (My Neighbour Totoro & Superhigh Resolution)

Is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s My Neighbour Totoro, adapted by Studio Ghibli, worth a stage at the Barbican? Production design wizardry shifts two dimensional puppetry to 3D in nods to the Hayao Miyazaki’s joyous 1988 Japanese fantasy animation. Plus, the on-stage 12-legged cat bus, floppy chickens and “soot sprites”...

Also up for discussion is Superhigh Resolution at the Soho Theatre, a hard-hitting and timely tale about the state of the NHS.

The Evening Standard’s chief theatre critic Nick Curtis joins culture editor, Nancy Durrant, to review two more shows from London’s stages.

Part 1: My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican

-What is My Neighbour Totoro about?

-The consoling figure from the forest, but does the play lack jeopardy?

-The puppets – the most ‘chickeny chickens’ on the WestEnd ever, puppeteers, direction and cast

-The music score, sung in Japanese and English, by Joe Hisashi

-Was the show too long, and was the acting any good?

-The floating cat that isn’t neutered

Part 2: Superhigh Resolution at the Soho Theatre

-The bang up to the minute story of a junior NHS doctor

-Why it’s reminiscent of Tennessee Williams’s style

-Why it’s an important, sometimes funny, but tough watch

-Why you shouldn’t go Christmas shopping after watching the show

-Jasmine Blackborow’s ‘deeply affecting’ central performance

-The brilliant ingenious and simple set, entirely made by hospital curtains – by Andrew Edwards

What to watch in London right now? Well, this is your Theatre Review from the Evening Standard.

For all the latest visit www.standard.co.uk/culture

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