Kiki & Herb - New Mardi Gras Festival Event - The Studio, Sydney Opera House - 23/02/06

Ethan Switch - Friday, 24 February 2006 - Print Version

Foam still wraps the dividers on the fresh walkway block of The Studio. New jutting from the old and even the windows claim the off cuts of recent work to the glass installations. People are filing in with an apparent float on beer and champagne. Tables on the floor straight up sign this work to be a cabaret style affair.

No apparent need for actual tickets as the psychic paper works well enough in the face of the lost. Watching on, the cold of the air conditioning cools things down quick. Too quick for some and the night is still day outside for an early performance before the sunset.

Glittering on the grand piano, Herb, a Gay retard Jew, introduces Kiki in a flamboyant grace of presence. No pause as the keys of the piano hit out with a fast and stationary relic of the past. The fag hag rips right into a song and it's all out chaos from there.

Slipping early into Radiohead's Creep amongst other tunes original and out of the way, performance in song is nothing short of fun. Kicking hard and high, the energy is all apparent. No let up in the cause for celebration as Kiki rips her own style into each and every one. Loud, brash and all unforgiving, it's cabaret with a hairy edge days away from taking to with a razor or dripping hot wax.

Deadening the waters of the first half, corpses of anecdotes run long, to absolutely nowhere, and for no real gain outside another reason to drink. Tenuous links appear in the transition from one song to the next and it's suffocation extreme listening to the sad and sorry tale of Kiki and Herb up to this point. Hilarious though points and parts are, they're far from frequent and nodding off is apparent for those trying to figure out where all those cough stoppers in the foyer hang out.

Mixing in Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time and Alphaville's Forever Young, post interval antics prove to be the better of the halves. Slicing a finer line to the dynamic, Kiki and Herb spend the better lot interacting and philosophising about things such as politics and homosexual relations. Ramblings of a drunk still manages to crank out the lungs with a mind gone insane and vicious. Cutting a lot of the meandering fat earlier, Kiki's relationship with the drink is better in tune although still sipping away waiting for effect.

The boiling frenzy continues right up until the end. With an encore up in the air, Banging in the Nails gets the turn and whips the more eager into a sing-a-long. Pelvis thrusting only happens up on stage, the rest of the people sitting and spit out their drinks from the laughter.

Kiki & Herb, the kind of lounge act that pumps the unsuspecting underground haunts with an acidic nature and bite.

Ethan Switch