Barbican Centre: My Neighbour Totoro threatened by electric fault

The Barbican Theatre's electrical infrastructure is said to be at the "end of its life"

The Barbican Centre's show My Neighbour Totoro was under threat before it began because of electrical issues, a City of London Corporation committee has heard.

The problems at the central London theatre threatened the performance weeks before the hit show was due to begin in October.

To protect the Studio Ghibli adaptation, the Barbican spent £100,000 on a generator, a report said.

The show broke Barbican box office records when tickets went on sale.

The Barbican's electrical infrastructure is at the "end of its life", the committee heard. Electrical issues shut down a performance of another show in September when flying gear, used to lift heavy items, failed to work, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The stage adaptation of My Neighbour Tortoro, a collaboration between executive producer Joe Hisaishi and the Royal Shakespeare Company, has run for 13 weeks and it is set to finish at the end of the month.

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Claire Spencer, CEO at the Barbican Centre, told the meeting on Monday: "This is the most unusual and unsatisfactory situation that we find ourselves in.

"Without the diligence and commitment of the engineering team, we would have lost that show."

Surveys were taken before the new year to try to get to the bottom of the issue and ensure the Studio Ghibli adaptation could keep going

One committee member said: "We are suffering from critical (electrical) failures, not only [in the theatre] but in other areas of the building."

A City of London Corporation report into the issue said: "There have been several incidents of high voltages but there is no regularity or pattern allowing us to predict low or high-risk times or to easily identify the cause.

"There is a three-phase plan in operation. A short-term interim solution has been implemented which has removed the risk of an outage or failure that would stop a performance of Totoro.

"The next phased works will follow the current show at the end of January."

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