Highest star wattage on the Edinburgh fringe? Give that award to Reuben Kaye instantly. Greatest comedy present? Nicely, the Australian singer and comedian acquired a comedy award nomination this week, and – if power of persona is an element – could effectively win it at Saturday’s ceremony. For me, Dwell and Intimidating showcases an act whose appreciable strengths are musical and polemical fairly than strictly comedian. He has presence: good luck trying anyplace else when Kaye is on stage. He has the voice of an angel, and a satan, of which he’s in chic management. (“It’s similar to Taylor Swift! – if she fucked Morticia Addams …”) And he has emphatic opinions, primarily in regards to the “descent into fascism” and rise in queerphobia.
He has jokes, too. However that is a kind of reveals engineered as a lot for affirmation as it’s for laughter. And, warmly although I concur with the feelings expressed, I felt preached at as usually as I felt amused. That mattered much less at Kaye’s earlier present, The Butch is Again, which pinned its viewers to the partitions of the Meeting Checkpoint two years in the past. The steadiness right here tilts away from full-fat musical cabaret and in direction of poised, exact and high-camp storytelling, as our host recounts his brush with notoriety after a Jesus joke on Aussie TV prompted a nationwide outcry.
There are shades right here of Dylan Mulvaney’s scandal story (performing elsewhere on the town), though Mulvaney provides introspection to the telling. Kaye’s gale-force ethical certainty permits for little of that, in a present that offers again to the bigots nearly as good as he’s acquired. Routines tackle the inadvertent gayness of a macho rugby participant’s homophobic tattoo, the poor grammar of Kaye’s on-line trolls and – demonstrating straight male obsolescence, this one – discovering his Russian granny’s Soviet-issue vibrator. The potent closing phases hint Kaye’s indomitable spirit again to its roots in Auschwitz, which his great-aunt escaped, returned to and survived.
By the ultimate chanson, he’s out amongst his viewers, flirting and laying on fingers. Kaye proves himself an entertainer from the extremities of his cheekbones to the guidelines of his toes right here, his present a strident and sassy rallying cry for queer liberation.
