Modern Family's Sarah Hyland with Hello Kitty at a NYLON Magazine event in London. Photo / Getty Images
Modern Family's Sarah Hyland with Hello Kitty at a NYLON Magazine event in London. Photo / Getty Images
As the Japanese logo is brought to life for a global touring show, Julia Llewellyn Smith discovers the amazingly far-ranging appeal of the squeaky clean "cat".
In a studio in London's East End, images of brightly coloured ice-cream scoops flash on a huge screen. In front of it, a giant dog, a penguin with spiky hair, a pink-eared rabbit, a woman and an enormous Hello Kitty are conversing in helium-squeaky voices.
"I'm really not sure," bleats Hello Kitty (impressively, given she has no mouth).
"Oh, go on, Kitty," urges the rabbit, who turns out to be Kitty's best friend. "My Melody."
"Well, I guess it will be fun," demurs Kitty, her neon nose flashing, then cries: "OK, I'll do it." With squeals of delight, the gang launch into as spirited a dance routine as is possible in enormous animal suits, gyrating to Echosmith's Come Together.
Welcome to the surreal world of Hello Kitty Live: Fashion and Friends - rehearsing for its world premiere at the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo.
Amazingly, despite Hello Kitty's 41-years of world domination (the Japanese brand is worth $7 billion annually), it's the first time the logo that's adorned everything from loo seats to airliners, pencil cases to "personal massagers", will have embarked on a live, global tour.
In a historic moment, like Greta Garbo, it's the first time the winsome creature will ever have spoken live. "We had to get special permission from her owners, Sanrio, to have her talk - it was a big deal," says producer Serena Pellegrino.
Hello Kitty with Kendall and Kylie Jenner. Photo / Getty Images
"The responsibility of giving Hello Kitty a voice is quite considerable," adds director Adam Stafford. "We're just hoping we won't dash people's expectations, like when silent movie actors spoke for the first time in the talkies."
There can't be a British household with pre-teen girls that's oblivious to Hello Kitty. For my daughter's sixth birthday, four years ago, I forked out around $200 on a HK cake, decorations and an HK suit in which my husband dispensed HK party bags to giggling little girls.
Hello Kitty, centre, with her friends (from left) Bad Badtz-Maru, Chococat, My Melody and KeroKeroKeroppi. Photo / Getty Images
In her native Japan, the phenomenon is even stronger, with two Hello Kitty theme parks (another has just opened in China) and the title of tourism ambassador to China. So what is the appeal of this guileless creature with a red bow at her ear?
"There's just a magic about her that resonates," says Stafford. "She's cute, she's friendly, there's a warmth about her that engages you - all conveyed by a very simple logo."
Hello Kitty merchandise is popular with young ones to adults worldwide. Photo / Getty Images
Despite her bland appearance, Hello Kitty's back story is complex, not least because - despite the whiskers - she is not officially a cat, but an English schoolgirl named Kitty White, compared by her creators, Sanrio, to Mickey Mouse.
"No one would mistake the Disney character for a human - but at the same time he's not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn't a human, she's not quite a cat either," it clarified when baffled fans learnt the news last year.
Her official biography, devised in the Seventies when the Japanese were in thrall to all things British, outlines how Kitty lives in the London suburbs with her parents and sister (called Mimmy in the show), is a Scorpio who loves apple pie, and who also loves English, music and art at school.
Lady Gaga wearing a Hello Kitty adorned dress for a photo shoot. Photo / Getty Images
Little of that mattered to the Japanese who, from the moment she first appeared on a purse, saw the character as the epitome of their cult of kawaii or "cuteness".
Slowly, her popularity grew in the West, boosted in the early Noughties when stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Mariah Carey embraced the brand, in what psychologists declared to be a nostalgic yearning for childhood security and innocence.
"The show's target market is girls aged three to 10, but I think they'll be surprised how many adults come along," says Katrina Flavell, who plays Sophie, the human little girl who narrates the show and interacts with the audience.
"The Facebook page is full of comments from women, saying: 'Oh, shall we go, girls?' I really liked Hello Kitty as a little girl and I really like her now. There's just something so safe about her."
The show tells the story of Hello Kitty's equally anthropomorphised friends, plucked from Sanrio's 100-plus cast of "characters", including Badtzu the rebellious penguin and - slightly shockingly given she's supposed to be about 12 - Daniel, Kitty's photographer boyfriend. ("Their relationship has never been properly defined," Pellegrino explains.)
China's first Hello Kitty theme park. Photo / Getty Images
They persuade Kitty to design an outfit for an X-Factor style fashion contest.
"Then Kitty gets a creative block and the pressure's on," Stafford explains. "It's a very modern, adult concept." But not too adult. "There's never been a Hello Kitty script before, so Sanrio issued very strict guidelines. The writers couldn't have her selling alcohol on the street or anything like that," Pellegrino says.
Judging by my 10-minute taster, Sanrio has nothing to worry about: the show seems more sugary than the Bake Off final. But it's certainly a lavish affair, featuring elaborate costumes, LED backdrops and dance routines.
Hello Kitty. Photo / Getty Images
One of the main challenges for choreographer Del Mak was directing dancers in hot and heavy costumes to perform to songs by the likes of Bruno Mars and Kylie Minogue.
Stafford, meanwhile, had the problem of how to make mouthless characters speak (feminists have long criticised this aspect of Hello Kitty's physique as reinforcing notions of female disempowerment).
The solution was to have the performers act to a script pre-recorded by voiceover artists.
Image 1 of 8: Hello Kitty and dancers celebrate the arrival of the EVA Boeing 777-300ER Hello Kitty Jet at LAX Airport on September 18, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Photo / Getty Images
Who these performers are, we may never know. Sanrio guards its characters' mystique ferociously; even at rehearsals, security is tight, ensuring that neither I nor anyone else spots them out of full costume. They'll have to work to keep their secrets - the show's destined to tour Europe, then the UK, then, if all goes well, the Middle East and Asia, before (in an ideal world) ending up in Japan itself.
"The sky's the limit," grins Pellegrino, while in the background the Kitty character watches dumbly, as sweet and Zen-like as ever.
