My Neighbour Totoro - Barbican / Coliseum / Gillian Lynne

I’ve got my eye on that green t-shirt…

Logged on at 17:45 today (press night) and there was a £25 stalls seat there so I nabbed it and jumped on my bike. Very glad I did, this was wonderful. Agree some of the pacing is a bit slow at points but the whole spectacle of it really won out for me.

For anyone trying for day seats a couple of tips after my successful purchase this morning:

If a date is sold out it doesn't allow you to click on the link for that date to see the actual seat map (the link will just say 'sold out'). This means that by the time the day seats become available by the time you've waited for the link to work the seats might all be gone. To get around this check regularly a few days in advance for the date that you are after, as sometimes single returned seats pop up which then enable the seat map to be seen, and you can save the URL/address of that page. Then on the actual day you can just go straight to the URL of the page even if the button for that date is showing as 'sold out'

I kept clicking the 'refresh' button on the page (not using my browser's refresh button) every second since 9:55am, and the front row became available for purchase for £25 at 9:57 (Thank you Mark for your tip that they became available early when you were trying!). So definitely don't wait until 10am to try!


EDIT: To go along with my first point, on the calendar tonight is showing as 'sold out' so you can't click on the link to see the seat plan, however if you go directly to the link to to today's performance you can see there are still some day seats left for tonight which I am presuming haven't been sold because most people can't access the actual page while the link on the calendar is showing as 'sold out'

@burlybear - could we have a poll please?

How are the accents in this? As someone who's part-Japanese, this film is a v fond part of my childhood, so I'm in two minds about going. On the one hand, I've got no doubt that the visuals will be great (Improbable's work in a couple of ENO operas was fantastic), and I think my daughter would enjoy the puppetry. On the other hand, I'm conscious that sitting through such a quintessentially Japanese story in English might be v weird, especially if they're doing American accents (from clips I've seen online they use American actors for the film's English dub) or if the story has been tweaked too much to fit a more Western or modern context. If they are using any of the original songs, are they still sung in Japanese?

@burlybear is busy having his fur shampooed and set, or summat. Will @tallpaul do? 🙂

Barbican online? Today Tix? I can't find rush info. Please advise. 

BBC news at 10 are doing a feature on it tonight

Yes, though they're keeping Totoro under wraps for now (fwiw, I am making a topiary Totoro at the mo, but need a bigger ladder for the top!)

I'll be in town from the US November 9-14. I'm planning on day seats, but in case that fails, can anyone confirm whether the Barbican runs a returns queue?

Just loved this. Went last night having booked tickets when booking first opened back in the summer. Hadn't expected my daughter to be in London so had only booked three tickets but thanks to jamb0r she was able to get a day ticket by having copied the URL at a time when the odd ticket was becoming available. Day tickets became available about a minute before 10 am. We so loved the central performance of Mei Mac who not only physically became a four year old but had the sort of mobile facial features which enabled her to do the full Ghibli tantrum etc. The puppeteers were wonderful and I love the way that they showed their workings. The music was terrific too. We must have watched the film dozens of times when my now adult children were small and this certainly had the feel. Lovely to see small children overwhelmed by excitement at the magic of the whole thing - good luck to those parents getting those kids to sleep!

I do hope that they extend this.