The only man coming down your chimney this year is Reuben Kaye. Smash the baubles and sling the tinsel in the canal! He’ll be performing in his show The Butch is Back! at the prestigious Southbank Centre, from 8 – 30 December.
Reuben Kaye is fast, on the edge, and brutally funny. He is a multi-award-winning Australian comedian, singer and writer. Loud, queer, politically active and brash, he’s also the winner of Best In Breed at Crufts 2022. He thought he was entering a different type of competition!
Reuben Kaye has performed at the Sydney Opera House, Just For Laughs Montreal, a tour including shows in Oslo, Helsinki and Amsterdam, and he’s had just over ten million views on TikTok. This OffWestEnd Award Winner is about to bring his outrageous brand of high camp to the side of the Thames.
High praise for Reuben Kaye: The Butch is Back!
‘It. Is. Carnage. Of the best possible kind!’ ★★★★★ – Miro Magazine
‘Outrageous, salacious, transgressive…There’s no finer way to end a festival night!’ ★★★★★ – The Chortle
‘Reuben is a flaming torch in a world of growing right-wing darkness.’ ★★★★★ – Culture Fix
‘An icon!’ ★★★★★ – Ed Fest Mag
The three-week run at the Southbank Centre follows a fabulous summer as a “beloved mainstay of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe” (Playbill) and his first full European tour with his band, The Close Contacts.
Earlier in the year, he toured across Australia, to the delight of audiences, finding enough time to remove his make-up to go viral for his appearance on prime-time Australian TV, advocating for Drag Queen Story Time and protecting Trans and LGBT+ youth.
Reuben Kaye explores the relationship between fathers and sons.
In The Butch is Back!, Reuben explores the relationship between fathers and sons through his own connection with his father as a queer, creative child and how it feels to process his childhood as a cabaret superstar.
Drawing links between masculinity and the apocalypse, the show tears apart the social phenomenon of coming out and re-claiming slur after slur while expertly taking down our right-wing government.
Reuben Kaye’s show is backed by a four-piece band that plays with various genres, styles and songs from Stormzy to Geri Halliwell, Reba McIntyre, Bobby Gentry, The Rolling Stones and Janelle Monae. Reuben barely draws breath for the entire evening. He gives us a much-needed Swarovski-studded revolt against the ever-narrowing views of an increasingly conservative world.
Join him on his journey to the centre of attention!
Reuben Kaye: The Butch is Back! tickets cost £25 and the show runs from 8 – 30 December at Southbank Centre, Purcell Room, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, United Kingdom.
The performance on Thursday, 14 December, is British Sign Language interpreted (BSL)
