Reuben Kaye The Butch is Back | Adelaide Fringe 2022 review

All-singing, all-dancing, all-shocking, all-swearing disgracefulness. It can’t be more strongly recommended.

Reuben Kaye The Butch is Back.

Reuben Kaye The Butch is Back

Cabaret

Rating: *****

Babylon at GOUD

Until March 20

“Inspiration, aberration, and the real reason Peter Dutton’s buying all those tanks,” Rueben Kaye declares as he fairly explodes onto the stage in his latest outrage, The Butch is Back.

By the reaction of the audience, whooping and hollering and hands in the air, Kaye now has a firm and fanatical fan-club in Radelaide.

Kaye begins with a 20 minute tour de force (I’m sure he’d accept tour de farce) in which his phenomenal singing voice is interwoven with a tightly-written, supremely intelligent patter that eviscerates every social quandary you can imagine, be it moral, behavioural, religious, environmental or, of course, sexual.

Part philosopher, poet and social critic (“I read Kierkegaard by candlelight”), Kaye’s genius is to tease as he gets closer and closer to saying something completely unacceptable … then say it, and keeps working it for all its worth until you’re weak with laughter.

Amazingly, there always seem to be a few knuckle-draggers in the audience who are shocked to the core by his antics. Quite why is a mystery, when you know you’re going to see a man with a face full of makeup, a verandah of false eyelashes, six inch boots, and a pout that could turn a Coalition minister’s head.

Perhaps that’s why his take on Portrait of a Man is so powerful.

Backed by a six-piece local band, The Close Contacts, this show is a fabulous 75 minutes of all-singing, all-dancing, all-shocking, all-swearing disgracefulness. It can’t be more strongly recommended.