THE NEW YORK TIMES
MAY 19, 2003
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Life Is a Drag, Old Chum,
But They Rise Above All That
`Kiki & Herb: Coup de Theatre' Cherry Lane Theatre

An expectant, whooping, knowing, ululating crowd greeted
Kiki & Herb when the lights went up on their new show.

For those who have never made their acquaintance, Kiki & Herb
are actually Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman. Mr. Bond is Kiki, the
one with the great legs in the net stockings, the fringed dress,
the blond wig, the hair ribbon. Mr. Mellman is Herb. He's at the
piano, just in front of the neon lights that spell out her name in
pink and his in blue on the intimate stage that suggests a black
boite of a cabaret.

The conceit of their skillful, intermissionless performance of
song and story in "Kiki & Herb: Coup de Theatre" is that they
are a veteran show business duo. With Kiki doing most of the
singing, camping, vamping and reminiscing and the highly
talented and always supportive but self-effacing Herb playing
a ceaselessly propulsive piano, they revisit a gloriously
checkered life and career.

Shows of this sort may not be everyone's C-cup of tease,
but from start to finish "Kiki & Herb: Coup de Theatre,"
created by Mr. Bond and Mr. Mellman and directed by
Scott Elliott, lives up to its title in a performance that wittily
comments on a style of entertainment even as it absolutely
revels in it. Ten minutes could be pared from the roughly
100 minute length without giving "Coup de Theatre" grounds
for a claim of critical abuse, but whatever the show's length,
Kiki remains a captivating combination-of caricature and
chanteuse as she sings and tells and tipples her way through a
survivor's tale worthy of Dickens in an age of rant, rock and rap.

In an intelligently calibrated performance that runs an emotional gamut from searing heartache to purblind vainglory,
Kiki, looking back to the duo's heyday in Monaco in 1967 and to the pair's meeting as "retards" in what she calls an
"institutional," dispenses hard-earned wisdom and tortured biography. Letting facts and political correctness fall where
they may, she limns a friend's compassion, a mother’s pain; she drops names, puts down Herb, picks up his spirits and
comments on news and politics. Ranging across the decades, all the storytelling is mixed with songs and snippets by
everyone and everything from Styx and Bob Merrill to Radiohead, Eminem, the Bee Gees, Meat Loaf and "Rent."

So here, as in past productions, is the saga of Kiki's abandonment by her mother; Herb as a gay Jewish foundling;
brutal life in the institutional; the rape of Herb; Kiki's discovery of her womanly powers; her lover the boxer; her dead
child; the children who abandoned her; and enough more self-absorption and self-exposure to fill a week of
confessional television.

Times may have been tough, but Kiki has come through. Even if the smile on her face sometimes wavers and a tear
gleams in her eye, she and Herb are always there for each other.

Taken on its own niched terms, "Kiki & Herb: Coup de Theatre" gleams like a rhinestone.