Deliciously delirious, Kiki and Herb set Soho Theatre Walthamstow on proverbial fire
In their first London performance since 2007, Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman bring their iconic New York based cabaret act Kiki and Herb to Soho Theatre Walthamstow for a riotous, speedy run. Over the course of two and a bit hours, Kiki and Herb tickle audiences with a truly striking spectacle of music and delightfully ‘drunken’ yapping.
The audience, punctuated with the energy of welcoming a beloved relative back home, buckled in for what would be an absolute ride. Kiki and Herb’s act has to be seen to truly be understood; they straddle various categories, paying homage to drag, cabaret, and the showgirls of yore. Kiki is drag, contained within a piece that expands what drag is understood to be. She commands the stage, oscillating between belting ballads and surprising mashups, both speeding up and slowing down the music to keep up with her constant meandering speech that seems to emerge as an inner monologue broken free from the constraints of the mind. Kiki glitters, literally and figuratively, her jewels and glass straw in her never-empty drink adding ambient noise to her song and speech.
Kiki is not the most reliable narrator – with her proclivity for boozing, genuinely incredible stories and apparent age of 95, she steers the ship with gloriously chaotic gumption for the evening. Accompanied as always by Herb on the piano, which he plays with astonishing skill and a hilariously individual style. Herb is the proverbial rock of the duo; Kiki and Herb are companions in life and on the stage, their relationship embodied with humor and sentimentality. The evening progresses in step with the duo’s consumption of booze, descending into apocalyptic apathy by the close of the evening. Emotional monologues increase in their unhinged logic as the songs become more deranged in nature. We learn more about the highlights and low points of Kiki and Herb’s illustrious careers and lives, the truthfulness of which remains obscure. The delight of Kiki and Herb lies within their subsistence and spirit, which flies in the face of truth at times, a potential response to the reality of the hazardous socio-political landscape we occupy.
Kiki and Herb are resilience embodied, the plight of their lives so insane it almost acts as a salve to the terrors of our age. The pair transcend any era; they are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. One can envision the two exactly as they are now, performing with the same wit and pathos a hundred years from today, leaving audiences with the same sense of uncanny hopefulness.