Adelaide Cabaret Festival review: Reuben Kaye’s enGORGEd

All eyes are on the 18-piece orchestra that fills the stage, lit with a cobalt-blue glow, when Reuben Kaye slowly enters the body off-stage, sashaying by way of viewers members and seductively caressing a couple of choose heads alongside the best way.

Holding a microphone hung with a horse’s tail and carrying trademark luscious lashes, flawless make-up, and a black satin swimsuit topped with what he later describes as a “Nosfera-tutu” cape including a splash of vibrant purple, his presence is magnetic. The lyrics of his opening music, “I’m a {Photograph}”, maybe provide an perception into each the artist we see and the person behind the efficiency.

Reuben Kaye. Photograph: Claudio Raschella

There appears to be a sense among the many viewers that we all know we’re in for an exciting, risqué expertise the place something can occur… as the person who failed to show off his cell phone on opening night time found. However we’re all in it collectively and even when we do sail so near the sting we’re typically teetering, we’re in protected (and little question completely manicured) arms.

Kaye has received a number of awards and a loyal viewers along with his anarchic, queer, provocative mix of storytelling, music and comedy, and enGORGEd has all of the components followers would count on – plus a wonderful orchestra led by musical director and pianist Shannon D Whitelock. It’s quick, it’s livid, it’s humorous, it’s filthy ­– and it’s so sharp it might pierce a gap in your coronary heart.

In between songs and music mash-ups, Kaye delivers rapid-fire quips and commentary wherein nothing is off-limits: from Putin to Jesus, Israel, Auschwitz, STDs, homosexual intercourse and clergymen. He mounts a spirited defence of drag storytime, and takes a swipe on the Murdoch media ­– which has apparently printed 45+ articles about Kaye since he was final in Adelaide and a furore erupted over his pun about Jesus on Channel 10’s The Venture.

Audiences might be grateful that the loss of life threats and protests haven’t blunted Kaye’s edge; in truth, the vulnerability he permits us to glimpse provides depth and poignancy to his efficiency. At one level, he segues between a narrative about taking part in dress-ups with a boyhood pal after which getting overwhelmed within the schoolyard, to a household story that’s each humorous and surprising.

A dressing up change mid-show sees Kaye return to the stage trying drop-dead beautiful in a floor-length black-velvet costume with prepare and diamanté neckpiece. “I requested for Edwardian mourning costume meets cabaret,” he quips. You’re proper, Reuben Kaye, little boys in attire are great… and so are grown males.

The music that follows, “Once I Fall Asleep it will likely be Endlessly”, is a spotlight, beautifully showcasing Kaye’s wealthy, deep vocals with flawless accompaniment from the orchestra’s strings part. He’s in equally positive kind with the belter “If I Dominated the World”.

With a run time of solely round 70 minutes, our solely criticism is that it’s throughout too quickly – and this reviewer, for one, would have appreciated extra songs within the combine; it appears a disgrace to not make extra of each Kaye’s voice and musicians. The poignant finale, nonetheless, couldn’t have been higher: a lovely tackle “Will You Nonetheless Love Me Tomorrow?”, with a spot-lit Kaye in full melancholic mode.

Verify your inhibitions and prejudices on the door and get alongside to enGORGEd. This system guarantees it’s Kaye’s “flashiest, funniest and most fearless endeavour but” – we are able to’t say definitively if that’s true, but it surely positively ticks all of the F-boxes.

Reuben Kaye is performing enGORGEd on the Dunstan Playhouse once more on June 17 and 24 as a part of the Adelaide Cabaret Competition, which continues till June 24. See extra tales and opinions on InReview’s Cabaret Competition web page.