‘I don’t think anyone ever gets used to it’: The DMs that still scare Reuben Kaye

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can lead to death threats as performer Reuben Kaye discovered 12 months ago.

Kaye’s appearance on Network Ten’s The Project ignited outrage after he made a sexual joke about Jesus, prompting a debate about whether religion should be off-limits to comedians and an apology from host Waleed Aly.

Kaye making that joke on The Project that elicited death threats towards him and his family.Credit: Network Ten

His show at last year’s Sydney Comedy Festival was delayed by safety concerns and later held accompanied by security checks and a police presence.

Kaye subsequently appeared on ABC’s Q&A program, minus drag make-up and extravagant costumes, alongside Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, where he said, “big name, straight comics” such as Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle often made jokes about religion. “This isn’t about the joke,” he said. “This is about who was telling it.”

Kaye also asked McKenzie whether her offence at the joke would have led her to “fill my DMs with death threats?”

“No, I’ve had death threats too,” she replied. “I think we could probably go toe-to-toe on negative social media.”

Reuben Kaye at lunch sports a tattoo of a pair of glasses belonging to Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist murdered in the Holocaust.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The controversy has died down, but the impact of the death threats is still felt.

“I don’t think anyone ever gets used to it,” Kaye says. “And I don’t think it ever doesn’t hurt and make you scared.”

Kaye is no stranger to threats – he joked about Jesus after discussing the hate he receives from sections of the Christian community for his sexuality and dressing in drag.

But he felt a sense of guilt about the impact of The Project controversy on his family, some of whom were forced to remove their addresses from the electoral roll.

Kaye says the targeting of family members also reinforces the point he made on Q&A that the anger “is not really about the joke”.

“It’s actually something much greater, much more sinister,” he says. “It’s people using their offence at the joke as an excuse for a wider thirst for oppression and violence.”

An award-winning comedian, singer and writer, Kaye is touring two shows – The Kaye Hole and Apocalipstik – to comedy festivals around Australia.

His shows are cabaret-style cluster-bombs of sharp political commentary, crude but funny jokes, heartfelt personal stories and virtuoso singing performed in glamorous, garish outfits.

Reuben Kaye performs at the Enmore Theatre last year.Credit: Ashley Mar

Highly opinionated and hilariously crude, Kaye’s funniest barbs are directed at himself. “I know I look like Cruella deVille if she competed in men’s shot put,” the performer, who often dresses in scarlet, says. “In my industry I am known as the Lamborghini of cabaret because I am red, I am expensive and, on a good day, I can fit four Italians inside me.”

Despite revelling in a bawdy punchline, Kaye, 39, did not pursue stand-up in his youth: “Too straight, homophobic, sexist. Just a lot of jokes about ‘Oh, my wife is such-and-such’.”

But he says there has been a dramatic shift in comedy after years of queer comedians being excluded from a stage dominated by straight acts performing sub-par material.

“They’re changing the vibe in comedy rooms,” he says. “That sexist machismo doesn’t fly any more.”

Kaye disagrees with the notion that wokeness stifles comedy, arguing instead it makes comics strive for more thoughtful, nuanced material.

Reuben Kaye in Sydney for World Pride.Credit: Dylan Coker

“I say some really awful things,” he says. “I say the worst things I can think of so I don’t think you’re not allowed to say anything any more. I just think you have to think more about it and if you have to think more about what you’re saying that’s a good thing.”

Among the “bits and bobs” tattooed on his body is a pair of glasses belonging to Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist and art collector murdered in the Holocaust. “It’s a reminder that I have to do a show about him somehow,” he says.

Kaye also has a switchblade knife inked his tricep above the words “Very Smart Maria. Very Smart” as a tribute to West Side Story.

Kaye calls his body “a big piece of gay art”.

“I think I always viewed my body a bit like ‘Oh, it doesn’t fit in the gay culture’,” he says. “I’m not super buff and hairless.”

Melbourne-born, but London-based, Kaye moved to Britain in 2010 to pursue a career in musical theatre. But he became mesmerised by the British capital’s rich cabaret scene – an art form he had dismissed as “Sondheim on a stool” – performers auditioning for musicals.

“It was an amazing network of gigs and community but only existed for a short period of time,” he says. “When I found that scene, I threw myself into it and every weekend was running between gigs with my suitcase through the streets of Soho. It was a wonderful time.”

Reuben Kaye didn’t think much of cabaret until he went to London.

Kaye’s costumes, make-up and towering heels make him an imposing figure on stage. His style of drag is a way to “lampoon and subvert societal norms of what people assume a man is”.

He adds: “It’s a shield that makes you more vulnerable.”

Kaye’s ribald commentary is halted by our waitress, Mina, who arrives at our table with a ruby red cocktail decorated with a stalk of celery and oyster in a shell.

The oyster slides down his throat with ease, but Kaye winces slightly after his first mouthful of The Ground’s Bloody Mary despite asking for the least spicy version.

“I was intrigued by the oyster garnish,” he says. “It kind of sounds more like a drag name.”

Kaye orders the oyster garnish with his Bloody Mary.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Kaye’s choice of restaurant – The Grounds of the City – was guided by friends interpreting his wish for an old-world vibe reminiscent of his hometown.

“There’s nothing more Melbourne than paying too much for food in a laneway,” he says.

Kaye’s showstopping cocktail is followed by plates of zucchini flowers, prawns, swordfish ceviche, scallops, burrata and grilled lamb fillets that are quickly admired and hungrily devoured before we embark on the topic of family.

Kaye grew up in Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs, where school was a daily torment of bullying that left physical and emotional scars. He was told not to go to the school formal for fear of being killed.

Scallops at The Grounds in the CityCredit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I was in and out of the principal’s office and sick bay,” he says. “The response was ‘maybe you should tone down some of your behaviour’.”

Kaye says his parents aspired for him to be an accountant, plumber or funeral director.

“Someone who won’t run out of work,” he says. “Their greatest fear was that you would run out of work.”

Kaye says his parents’ aspirations were “very Jewish immigrant. Like death is always present somehow, even as a joke”.

Lamb fillets at The Grounds.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Growing up, Kaye and his older brother – a former opera singer, now an agent – could not be in the back seat of the family car without brawling.

“I’ve knocked him out several times,” he says. “He locked me in a trunk – I’m still claustrophobic because of it. He was babysitting me once when I was six and made me watch Psycho.”

His brother also lives in London’, and Kaye will walk his sibling’s rescue greyhound, Caleb.

“Now we get on like a house on fire,” he says. “Like all brothers, there’s a term limit: three days and we’re ready to kill each other.”

Burrata at The Grounds in the City.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Kaye described how he came out to his dad in a TED talk, while his podcast, Come to Daddy, features guests – mostly fellow comedians – talking about their parents.

His latest cabaret show Apocalipstik explores the story of an uncle – “a Don Quixote figure” who stayed in East Germany after his Jewish parents left for Australia in the 1950s.

Kaye says gay men tend to lack male role models and identify with “the fabulous women in our lives”. “We idolise our female teachers, our mothers, our grandmothers. We give them all the best lines.”

The bill

London has been Kaye’s home for more than a decade, but he has mixed feelings about the city that has nurtured his career.

“I have wonderful friends. I can see world-class art any day or night of the week,” he says. “No partner, child or pet means I have the freedom to dress up and go see a show, walk along Hampstead Heath or stay at home in my underwear and eat Ben & Jerry’s while watching crap TV.”

“… [But] London isn’t the city it once was. Brexit, the Tories, it’s all taken a toll on the country, and you feel it in London. It was always a tough city, but it is losing a lot of its sparkle and allure.”

Kaye’s politics might veer left, but he is cynical about the motives of both sides of politics when it comes to issues that matter to the queer community.

Kaye says the uproar over drag queen storytime is an example of politicians scapegoating a minority rather than dealing with issues such as climate change and the housing crisis.

Sydney’s The Hills Shire Council voted in February not to sponsor drag storytime events, while Monash council in Melbourne cancelled a drag story-time event after threats from a far right group.

“House prices have spiked harder than the drinks at an NRL gang-bang and you’re worried about people in wigs reading to kids?” he says. “Give me a break. Here’s a secret: drag queens don’t give a shit about your kids. We just want to be paid. You closed down all the gay bars. Where do you want us to perform?”

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