A Muppet makeover

The stage version of My Neighbour Totoro has smashed box office records. We meet the Jim Henson puppeteers bringing Studio Ghibli's beloved film to life

- Chris Wiegand

Step into the Jim Henson Company's Los Angeles office and a gang of doozers from Fraggle Rock greets you at the front desk. Fozzie Bear peers out from a filing cabinet, Sesame Street's Big Bird poses in a giant rococo frame, and one of Maurice Sendak's wild things squats on a corner cabinet.

Among these American puppet idols hanging around the workshop of Henson's company is an ornament that will delight fans of Japan's Studio Ghibli. It is the prowling catbus from its 1988 animated film fantasy My Neighbour Totoro. For the uninitiated, that's exactly what it sounds like: a bus with fluffed-up tail, furry seats and headlight eyes that speeds on to the screen, breaking into a Cheshire grin and giving a wild miaow.

That must be one of the most anticipated moments in the Royal Shakespeare Company's upcoming London stage adaptation, which last month broke the Barbican's box-office record for sales in one day. Tickets got even hotter when it was announced that Jim Henson's Creature Shop would be making the puppets. The show's American puppet master, Basil Twist, relishes the challenge. "I'm glad people call on me to say: 'How are we going to do this?" He laughs before jokily inserting his fist into his mouth.

I'm here to meet some of the Totoro team but, this being the new normal of theatre-making, Twist has Covid so joins us via laptop. The Creature Shop's creative supervisor, Peter Brooke, and fabrication supervisor, Scott Johnson, let me rummage through the space where catbus and co will be realised for the stage. There's one room for mould-making, sculpting and mechanics; another for foam and fabric - the basic materials that made Henson's superstar Muppets. All around are animatronic contraptions. Cables, laptops and a 3D printer are cheek by jowl with glue pots, scissors and brushes, echoing the mix of production techniques used at Ghibli HQ.