Reuben Kaye: The Butch is Back

Even the police turned up for Reuben Kaye, guarding us all outside the Enmore Theatre as we were frisked on arrival for his show, The Butch is Back. 

Death threats against Kaye’s outrageous drag activism continue, but in April they were so over-the-top this Sydney show was cancelled. They exploded after his Jesus crucified joke on The Project and then his articulate queer defence on ABC TV’s Q&A.  Replying to a LNP politician bemoaning Christian persecution, Kaye snapped, “You’re next to a Jewish homosexual and you’re going to say Christians have been persecuted?”

Onstage too, Kaye relishes jokes about churches as havens of tax-dodging, hate control and child abuse.  I was born Jewish, he says with a back-kick to his elegant tail, and reared by Catholics.

He’s a long statuesque fellow dressed in black silk trousers, with big lipstick and even bigger eyelashes – too thin he hopes for an assassin to get a good shot! Backed by his impressive band, Kaye traverses every inch of the stage and face-down into quite a few laps in the audience.  His talk is filthy but intrinsic to his unstoppable, comic gay assertion.  Yet instead of the bitchiness of conventional drag queens, he speaks with sharp perceptions, tenderness and an irrepressible queer mind.   

Perhaps that’s why he’s celebrated by such a wide-ranging audience; us all touched by his serious reflections on being a gay child and man. Like at the age of 14, left silently on the footpath by his divorced Dad after telling him in the car that he was gay.  Or the handicap of being so cruelly labelled at school, not even understanding the words, but growing up into their negativity.

Luckily, Kaye segues expertly from serious to outrageous in a flash, and with a beautiful voice delivers often dark and haunting tunes, conjuring the shadows of old Berlin cabaret. The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”, Parton’s “Nine to Five” and many more he makes his own.

Sometimes he’s defeated by the speed of his own quips and quick vocal range; when words are lost and the meaning of songs. 

But Reuben Kaye is a man attuned to his audience and his times, laughing at so many  current woes; a Horseman of the Apocalypse, he calls himself, he’s the one riding side-saddle.   And he’s a very funny hero, especially recounting the vile murderous emails he’s received – and how many of them accidentally leave on their cheery “have a good day” signoffs.  He’s off soon overseas to court new audiences and outrage. 

Martin Portus

Photographer: Ashlea Mar