Kiki & Herb's lush life
The toast of Broadway, duo serves up cabaret with a twist in 'Magical Drinking Tour'
N EW YORK -- With eyes as wide as a feral cat and her gravity-ravaged décolletage swaying recklessly inside a cocktail dress rescued from Carol Channing's cast-off pile, the legendary Kiki DuRane is heading for the apex of a late-night show at Joe's Pub . The well-liquored septuagenarian has just completed the story of how she and her faithful accompanist, Herb, first met as discarded orphans at the Eerie Children's Institute in Pennsylvania in 1934. As the story decays into song, the air in the room feels like a thunderstorm is about to strike. Instead, Kiki delivers a Category Four wail.
"You're uggggly!" she screeches into the microphone, voicing society's cruel mockery of the duo's existence. "What's with that 'do? You're uggggly."
This cathartic lounge core act showcases -- so goes the back story -- two psychologically challenged, talent-impaired friends who released their first album ("The Hazy Days of Kiki") in 1957 and spent the ensuing decades in and out of jail, rehab, strangers' bedrooms, and performing gigs on Princess Cruise lines. Like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme on acid, Kiki drinks like a fish and encourages young girls to pursue careers as strippers, while her codependent pianist provides a continual stream of music behind her ranting, sputtering takes on songs ranging from Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to Radiohead's "No Surprises."
Kiki and Herb are too good -- or bad, depending on your perspective -- to be the genuine article. In fact, they are a twisted composite of golden-age entertainers created by Justin Bond (Kiki) and Kenny Mellman (Herb). The pair bring their Tony Award-nominated show "Kiki & Herb: Alive From Broadway" to the Virginia Wimberly Theatre Wednesday through June 30.
Calling Kiki and Herb a drag act may be technically accurate, but this is not drag in the sense of glamorous queens high-stepping to Whitney Houston tunes under a disco ball. Bond, 44, and Mellman, 38, have created characters who are intentionally flawed and all too eager to share their shortcomings through stories and songs. As Kiki, Bond ages himself 30 years with make up then slurs through a series of stories of failed relationships and career mishaps, illustrated through pop songs -- plus nightly emotional breakdowns.
"She's a banshee. I can get out a lot of personal frustration, energy, and rage. Having this character allows me to push out all this energy," Bond says at home the next day, before he's interrupted by a phone call. "I have to take this, it's my shrink."
"Please, let him take that," Mellman quickly adds with a grin.
Out of character and sans stage makeup, Bond cuts an androgynous figure in a polo shirt and madras shorts. Mellman, the music-obsessed arranger who meticulously tracks down the songs for the duo's shows, sits nearby in the sparsely-decorated living room of Bond's West Village apartment, occasionally jumping into Bond's sentences with one-liners.
Although they claim their characters are older than Jesus (only Kiki can do the story justice), Kiki and Herb were actually born 14 years ago. Bond and Mellman had met in San Francisco in the late-1980 s, when both were active in the AIDS protest movement. They were scheduled to perform a post Pride Day show in 1993, but Bond was too tired to sing in his own voice. Instead he performed as Kiki, a character he'd been developing. Mellman was dubbed Herb.
After relocating to New York, "we started playing in cabarets in the West Village, and we quickly developed not a specifically gay audience, but people in the downtown hipster scene," Bond says. "Our choice was not typical cabaret. There was a lot of indie rock and music that was of the time. We were really putting a unique twist on the songs, and music junkies really got that."
Their current circle of musical friends reads like a list of New York tastemakers: Scissor Sisters, Magnetic Fields, Antony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, Fischerspooner, and Le Tigre. Their debut CD featured guest vocals from Deborah Harry, Wainwright, and Isaac Mizrahi. Bond appeared as himself in John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus" last year.
The act's ridiculousness, venom, and sly political outrage has another benefit, Bond says.
"I found that as Kiki I was able to get away with a lot of political stuff in a funny way that would have been a little too preachy coming from some young man," he explains.
While Kiki and Herb's fictitious history is fraught with failure, Bond and Mellman's journey has been anything but. Their cabaret and club shows have led them to Carnegie Hall and an Obie Award-winning Off-Broadway run. They were nominated for a Tony for their Broadway show last year at the Helen Hayes Theatre.
Until now, Kiki and Herb's only Boston-area shows have been at the late Cambridge club ManRay. Huntington Theatre artistic director Nicholas Martin once came close to directing Kiki and Herb in New York, and, as a longtime fan, he says he was anxious to bring them to Boston. "Their kind of humor has always been very appealing to me," Martin says.
Despite the success, the physical and emotional toll of playing these characters has left a considerable strain on the pair. After a long year of playing Kiki off-Broadway, Bond burned his character's dress at a ritualistic May Day bonfire in Tennessee to free himself from his alter ego.
"I really got frustrated," he recalls. "I remember just putting on my makeup and crying because I was so over it. I felt like I was putting a cage on my head when I was putting on that makeup. Burning that dress really turned a corner for me. After that I made a conscious decision that I was no longer working for Kiki. Kiki was working for me."
As they prepare for their Boston run, part of a "Year of Magical Drinking Tour" that takes them to Australia, it seems that Bond and Mellman are at peace with their taxing characters.
"I didn't like being at the bottom of the bottom," Bond says of their early years. "And I certainly don't want to be at the top of the top. But I like being at the top of the bottom, and the bottom of the top. It's a nice place to be, stuck in the middle."
Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com 