Highest star wattage on the Edinburgh fringe? Give that award to Reuben Kaye right away. Best comedy show? Well, the Australian singer and comic got a comedy award nomination this week, and – if force of personality is a factor – may well win it at Saturday’s ceremony. For me, Live and Intimidating showcases an act whose considerable strengths are musical and polemical rather than strictly comic. He has presence: good luck looking anywhere else when Kaye is on stage. He has the voice of an angel, and a devil, of which he is in sublime control. (“It’s just like Taylor Swift! – if she fucked Morticia Addams …”) And he has emphatic opinions, mainly about the “descent into fascism” and rise in queerphobia.
He has jokes, too. But this is one of those shows engineered as much for affirmation as it is for laughter. And, warmly though I concur with the sentiments expressed, I felt preached at as often as I felt amused. That mattered less at Kaye’s previous show, The Butch is Back, which pinned its audience to the walls of the Assembly Checkpoint two years ago. The balance here tilts away from full-fat musical cabaret and towards poised, precise and high-camp storytelling, as our host recounts his brush with notoriety after a Jesus joke on Aussie TV prompted a national outcry.
There are shades here of Dylan Mulvaney’s scandal story (performing elsewhere in town), although Mulvaney adds introspection to the telling. Kaye’s gale-force moral certainty allows for little of that, in a show that gives back to the bigots as good as he’s got. Routines address the inadvertent gayness of a macho rugby player’s homophobic tattoo, the poor grammar of Kaye’s online trolls and – demonstrating straight male obsolescence, this one – finding his Russian granny’s Soviet-issue vibrator. The potent closing stages trace Kaye’s indomitable spirit back to its roots in Auschwitz, which his great-aunt escaped, returned to and survived.
By the final chanson, he is out among his audience, flirting and laying on hands. Kaye proves himself an entertainer from the extremities of his cheekbones to the tips of his toes here, his show a strident and sassy rallying cry for queer liberation.
• At Assembly George Square, Edinburgh until 25 August
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