[8] The play is directed by Phelim McDermott, produced and composed by Joe Hisaishi and the Royal Shakespeare Company, in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV.

[9] Reviewers comparing the movie and the play have noted that the adaptation has more speaking and greater development of supporting characters,[8][9] with more emphasis on the interactions between people.

[13] Furuhata's portrayal of Kanta received mixed reviews, with Oleksinski calling his performance "tender" and hilarious[3] and Quentin Letts of The Sunday Times writing it was "delightful [and] quirky";[4] Curtis said that it was a "parody of awkwardness".

[14] Saying that "there's nothing less Japanese" than having plastic leaves to represent the forest, production designer Tom Pye used wood liberally, using two-dimensional layers instead of using three-dimensional props.

Awarding it four stars, he compared it to a pantomime but ultimately praised it as a "vital power surge of Anglo-Japanese creative electricity fit for these soul-sapped times".

[8] In a five-star review in The Guardian, Arifa Akbar compared the play to the movie, writing that there was a "different imagination at work here, but it is just as enchanting and perhaps more emotionally impactful".

She highlighted the puppeteers' role, calling them a "human field of corn, swaying as one" and describing Totoro as "formidable, rumbling, eerie, comic and endearing at once".

[26] Writing in The Times, Clive Davis also picked out the music for criticism in a four-star review, attacking it as "so insipid" but praising the protagonists' portrayal, puppeteers, and set.

[4] Likewise focusing on the light nature was Nick Curtis of the Evening Standard, who stated in a three-star review that Totoro needed "more jeopardy, more darkness and more of the monsters".