Kiki and Herb Make America Great Again

“Herb and I are quite delighted that we are finally able to perform for the millennials,” the ancient cabaret diva Kiki DuRane declared from the stage of Joe’s Pub the other night. “I know that so many of you young people have tuned in to our sound. Quite frankly, between the AIDS and the Alzheimer’s, we haven’t got a fan over forty.” It was still early in the evening, but Kiki, wearing a salmon-colored flapper dress, a bedazzled pink-and-black head bow, and garish drawn-on wrinkles, already seemed tipsy. Herb, her devoted sidekick and accompanist, was at the piano, his gray hair in a ponytail and the rest of him in a Vegas-style silver suit. The audience was ecstatic—they hadn’t seen this pair since 2008, the year Obama was elected. That, Kiki claimed, was the reason for their hiatus. “I was watching the election results come in and said, ‘Herb, our goose is cooked! Nobody wants to see Kiki and Herb when they have hope.’ ”