The book is now closed on this year's most cynical, sozzled yuletide entertainment. This festive one-off sees New York cabaret duo Kiki and Herb murder a few carols (their Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would send toddlers straight to therapy) and pay a perverse tribute to Bethlehem's birthday boy. "I'd like to sing this next song to a wonderful man," says Justin Bond's raddled drag diva Kiki DuRane, "a true humanitarian and the most tender lover I've ever known: Jesus Christ."
As you'd expect of a duo beloved of Rufus Wainwright, Kiki and Herb know how to put on a show. It is hard to resist the sheer force of personality at play here, as lamé-clad Kiki - whose voice turns on a sequin from melting ice-cream to shredding larynx - whacks out torch songs and strangulated pop hits, and Herb (Kenny Mellman) contributes lush piano accompaniment. But the songs are more demented than comic, and their strange menace is less often located in the lyrics than in Bond's teetering grandiosity. If only he knew when to stop: too often, you feel that this poison ivy of a prima donna could do with a good prune.
When she is on form, she is fabulously improper, squawking gibberish to cover for lyrics she cannot be bothered to sing, or recounting love affairs with Hitler and Father Christmas ("It gave me pause/ When Santa Claus/ Said he liked it from behind"). And there is a brilliant paean to the murdered six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. "Can you imagine what the world would have been like if she'd lived? Britney who? Amy Winewhat?" But the evening's most memorable moments are a tender love solo sung by Mellman's Herb, and Kiki's unamplified, and for once unadorned, Silent Night. You couldn't call this a holy night, but it is certainly wholly disreputable.
