Kiki & Herb Are Trying!

After a 17-year hiatus, Kiki and Herb—brought to life by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman—make a boozy, triumphant return to London, and not a moment too soon.

“AND now, here we are,” notes Kiki - a grizzled septuagenarian lounge singer: “…in Wal-tham-stow.”

In her seventies, she stumbles through one comeback show after another, growing increasingly pissed on Canadian Club.

“If it weren’t for Herb’s drinking, I’d be the one with clogged arteries,” Kiki confides. She tops off her glass with a practiced hand. “Now, let’s make Mama pretty.”

Her longtime accompanist, Herb (Mellman)—a wistful figure she met in a childhood institution—has been by her side ever since.

The whole point of the show is the way it treads the line between sincerity and extreme artifice. Her absolute narcissism is accompanied by a sense of fragility and frustration.

His competency, devoted handling of her, is melancholic and touching.

Maximalism meets controlled chaos as the NYC cabaret duo come out of ‘retirement’ for their first London shows in 18 years.

There are references to Amazon and Jeff Bezos’s wife (‘dog face’) and A.I. (‘artificial intelligence could never replace us, Herb.’)

Yet it is knowingly silly enough that you can overlook the aspects that feel contrived.

A huge array of classic pop and rock cultural references are liberally paraded: Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, David Bowie, and more. Most compelling, Michel Legrand’s Windmills Of My Mind, sung at double speed, and Marc Almond’s A Lover Spurned.

Wacky covers spanning hip-hop to power-pop, funk to punk, art-rock to spoken-word rants, all put through Kiki’s lacerating blender of a larynx to come out sounding like deliriously overwrought torch songs.

Numbers are punctuated by lengthy digressions as Kiki ruminates bitterly on personal history, politics, self-sacrifice, and shattered dreams.

We hear about the drowning of her daughter Coco off Monte Carlo, squawking gibberish to cover for lyrics she cannot be bothered to sing.

Ultimately, these were not songs of joy but of insane possession and exorcism, a mood that continued and escalated through the nearly three-hour show.

It is true that multi-talented Kiki and Herb’s eclecticism may have succeeded in confusing people: one stuffy pop star was notably absent after the interval. This is cabaret with claws.

But Herb is by no means just silent backup. In addition to swooping harmonies and hammering the Steinway uninterrupted throughout the set, he coaxes Kiki through her more traumatic episodes, urging her to move on and forget.

In truth, this is a work of self-citation, though that’s not a criticism: it is two legends rummaging around in their own past for inspiration - and looking to the future, with gritted teeth.

At one point, Kiki muses on her friendship with Sylvia Plath: “She wanted to be a showgirl, but she just didn’t have what it takes.”

But in such bland theatre times, it’s good to see them parking their tanks back on the stage at the stunning SoHo Theatre Walthamstow. Flirting with disaster.

In case I haven’t mentioned it enough already, Kiki and Herb are very funny. But what makes them really special is just how raw it all is, too, ready to hit you in the feels when you least expect it (there’s one cover, that left me questioning everything).

At the end of the evening, after taking on Total Eclipse of the Heart, and dialling absolutely everything up to eleven, battle-hardened Kiki coos: “If I could love, I would love you all.”

The evening runs at almost 3 hours. Gracefully, though, it all hangs together as one piece. Splendid.