Downtown legends and Tony Award nominees Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman are back at it with the long-awaited return of their beloved and bizarre neo-retro lounge act Kiki and Herb. Their brand-new show, Seeking Asylum!, will open April 21 at Joe鈥檚 Pub at The Public Theater, and tickets sold out in record time. 半岛体育 caught up with the pair to discuss their reign as the once and future queens of cabaret.
Your show sold out very quickly. Do you think you might add more?
Justin Vivian Bond: Nooo.
Kenny Mellman: We鈥檙e old.
Will that affect how you relate to the audience?
JVB: Well, Kiki and Herb were always of their time, in the moment and in the place where they were performing, and they have pretty much the same world view that they always had. They鈥檒l be responding to what they鈥檙e seeing go on in the world now.
KM: And, luckily, a lot is going on.
JVB: It鈥檚 helpful that Kiki and Herb have known several of the current presidential candidates personally. And have personal, ah, anecdotes about them.
How about for you as performers? Is there a difference in your affection for the characters, for each other, for the style?
JVB: We spent so much time with those characters and with each other that, you know, it was getting a little bit scary鈥攜ou start to feel like, 鈥淥h my God, if I keep serving this beast that is Kiki and Herb, I鈥檓 never going to serve any other creative impulse I have.鈥� Now I鈥檓 confident in my ability to do a lot of other things, so I guess I don鈥檛 have the resentment that I had before all the time.
Was it a clear decision right away to do this at Joe鈥檚 Pub?
KM: Joe鈥檚 has always been a home for both of us as Kiki and Herb, and individually, so it was a perfect choice.
JVB: We like cabaret venues because the audience can drink, and we can take our time. It can be more free-flowing, more intimate.
Literally. You鈥檝e also played Broadway and the Cherry Lane Off-Broadway, which seemed to be kind of in a different vein.
KM: A wonderful director, Scott Elliott, scripted the Cherry Lane show. It was an interesting exercise.
JVB: That made it more like a play. It brought up the idea that anyone could play Kiki, and we were actually working on making that happen.
KM: The next Kiki was going to be Jennifer Jason Leigh. It never happened.
JVB: Nobody, including Scott Elliott, can find the script!
Well, it鈥檚 not too late!
JVB: You鈥檙e good at that sort of thing, aren鈥檛 you?
KM: Find the scripts, Ben. Leslie Kritzer!
JVB: Patti LuPone!
KM: Patti LuPone as Kiki.
Speaking of the crossover between theatre and cabaret, your work has had a tremendous influence in the downtown 鈥渁lt cabaret鈥� genre that has sprung up.
JVB: Well, that was our mission in the first place. We felt that cabaret could be so vital and essential that we could bring the music of our generation and the attitudes and experiences of our generation to the genre, which wasn鈥檛 happening at all because cabaret had become all about nostalgia. So that was our goal鈥攖o make cabaret relevant, and it is again, which is really great especially in places like New York and London and even in San Francisco, various cities around the world where it鈥檚 totally transformed.
KM: We began during ACT UP/Queer Nation years. So our audience was made up of the people we were protesting with in the streets. There was a sense of community building.
JVB: The same thing happened everywhere鈥攊n New York and London and Sydney鈥攚e didn鈥檛 debut at the Opera House. We started out small and became part of the community. We did what we had to, we sucked a lot of d*ck.
