Kiki and Herb: Coup de Theatre (review)

In a 1999 review for Harper's, Susan Kittenplan referred to the duo of Kiki (Justin Bond) and Herb (Kenny Mellman) as "cabaret's answer to The Blair Witch Project: no budget, lots of underground buzz and so frightening to watch." They exist as a beautifully washed-up lounge act: Bond in drag as Kiki, a narcissistic, almost-supernaturally alcoholic diva; Herb, a gay, Jewish, largely mute, retard piano player. The pair's near decade on the downtown cabaret circuit has earned them a passionate core of fans. However, with their graduation to the decidedly more stately Cherry Lane Theatre after years of performances at clubs and avant-garde performance spaces like P.S. 122, Kiki and Herb have taken the problematic, and yet perhaps inevitable, step toward a kind of legitimacy in their newest production, Kiki and Herb: Coup de Théâtre.

The idea of such a move may seem disconcerting in light of the ill-fated (and bigger-budgeted) sequel to The Blair Witch Project. What happens when the buzz is no longer just underground? Fortunately, the audience's disquietude is dispelled by the appearance of a gigantic pink and blue neon sign proclaiming their names. Discovered in a proscenium so unlike their cabaret venues, Kiki and Herb immediately begin to play with the conventions of the picture-frame stage. A piano (complete with mini-van-type drink-holder for Kiki) dominates the set, surrounded by an inset egg-shaped proscenium that places Kiki and Herb in a lacquered cocoon. From the very beginning Kiki brazenly announces to the audience "We're here to tear the fourth wall down!" Throughout the performance Kiki lurches into the auditorium, her presence somehow becoming even more disturbing in the conventional theatre, her cat scratches of make-up illuminated for all to see. Kiki muses about their move to a new space, fantasizing that if her head simply exploded, gushing forth molten lava and enveloping the audience, the result would be "like the ruins of Pompeii" and could become an installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kiki imagines the next seemingly logical step in the evolution of the act: from the bohemian cabaret, to the middle-brow proscenium stage, to a work of visual art, frozen forever in the moment of performance.

The proscenium stage has also traditionally been a space for the disclosure of secrets viewed from a voyeuristic perch. Here, Kiki and Herb bring the secrets to us: Kiki tells her estranged love child Miss D., supposedly in the audience to watch her mother perform for the first time, that she is an interracial love child, "a cotton-poly blend." Kiki then frantically looks for Miss D. in the audience, interrogates the person who is sitting in the seat where she should be, and, for a few moments, lapses into an alcohol-induced trance of regret and shame. It is all part of the history of Kiki and Herb, with each show unveiling a new part of a near-mythological narrative. But the audience is never allowed to be distanced from the moment of revelation, and never too comfortable.

A change from their cabaret act is a flashback to the duo's halcyon days on the French Riviera. The neon sign goes up, and Kiki comes to the stage like Lady Macbeth in a 1960s ensemble, the lines of age wiped away, pushing the stage's ghost light before her. Together, Kiki and Herb show the rehearsal that directly antecedes the death of Kiki's eldest daughter Coco, who drowned in the Mediterranean after having fallen from the deck of Aristotle Onassis's boat. Here is a moment that helps fill out the duo's narrative, giving the audience an insight into the behind-the-scenes life as they lived it.

Songs of every stripe bracket such moments. As in their cabaret performances, the songs...