Only Australia’s resident cabaret king, Reuben Kaye, could turn an existential crisis into an hour and a half of uproarious comedy. Fresh off the runaway success of last year’s Live and Intimidating, Kaye returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with the apocalypse on his mind and some family history to unpack.
He begins Apocalipstik, as all kings must, on a golden throne surrounded by towering portraits of himself. The Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre has been transformed into a political caucus, throne room and personal shrine in one with Kaye’s signature bold lash and red lippy splashed across two hanging banners on either side of the stage. He’s gathered us to celebrate, mourn and rally against the end of the world; a nihilist in six-inch heels, strutting from double entendre to biting social commentary with the elegance and narcissistic cheek we’ve come to expect from him.
But a Reuben Kaye show is the yardstick one uses to evaluate a Reuben Kaye show. And unfortunately, Apocalipstik does not quite live up to the high bar he’s established for himself. In between soaring ballads and whip-smart improv, Kaye tells us the story of his Uncle Helmut, an enigmatic man he met only once as a child. None of our weird uncles could hold a candle to Helmut; a charismatic man, wanted criminal and semi-successful connoisseur of amateur sex tapes in 1990s West Berlin.
Kaye revels in the bawdy details of this camp figure. He’s a magnetic storyteller and the show is at its unruly best when it channels his natural theatricality to tell Helmut’s already theatrical life story. But things go awry when he starts to shoehorn Helmut’s life into general commentary. Kaye has always had his finger on the pulse of current affairs, but nowhere has his topicality felt more unfocused. Stories of his uncle are shoehorned into pre-written thesis statements and near-sermonic asides about nearly every contemporary crisis: calls to ‘cry for freedom’, rally against capitalism (after buying Kaye’s merch, of course) and odes to small moments of rebellion. Kaye is too good to let these moments slip into the saccharine, but teeters close.
The problem is that Helmut’s life just doesn’t quite fit into these generalised asides, a fact Kaye acknowledges. “What is this show even about?” he quips at one point. “Remember my uncle?” he says, trying to butter up a particularly toothy segue. No one is more self-aware or in control of their audience, but there’s a limit to Kaye’s self-awareness that catches in the throat (pun intended) after a while, a sense that we’re being told criticisms of the show that should’ve been raised and resolved when it was being written.
There’s no one like Reuben Kaye. If Apocaliptstik feels disappointing, it’s because of a sense of missed opportunity more than anything. There’s still more than enough audience sexcapades, rallying calls against oppressive systems and soaring belts for it to represent a thrilling addition to his ever-expanding kingdom.
Apocalipstik is playing at Malthouse from March 28 until April 21 and tickets are available here.