Music
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Jinkx Monsoon’s Judy Garland musical, review and star rating: ★★★★★
Death Drop the Musical cautiously welcomed people back to the theatre in December 2020 with one major claim to fame: that it would be the first all-drag musical. Six years ago, that felt progressive.
The musical was good, but it played to drag tropes: it was brash, relied heavily on physical comedy, and was literally called Death Drop, which is a dramatic fall-to-the-floor move that typifies the dramatic high production value often associated with drag performance.
Since then, drag queens and kings have become fairly commonplace in the West End, although they are often cast in pantomimes or, if in straighter productions, then in the role of a drag queen. It feels groundbreaking, then, that US drag artist Jinkx Monsoon has been cast in a straight acting role as Judy Garland in a leading London production: an homage to the life and legend, written by the British playwright Peter Quilter in 2005.
Jinkx Monsoon: Judy Garland imagined anew
The story – following Garland’s final weeks while suffering from drug addiction under her exploitative fifth husband and tour manager Mickey Deans – is compelling. Garland is aggressive, arrogant, and stroppy, Quilter’s shocking portrait showing a different side to the woman who is typically glamourised. It conveys the pressure she was under to perform nightly shows to make up for mounting debt (the show is based on a true story).
Monsoon, who is immense, brings the show a welcome new LGBTQ+ perspective. Garland, as a programme note reminds us, is the ultimate gay icon – her story of overcoming strife is relatable to many queer people – and so seeing a queer person play her is immensely powerful for a community that has long been underrepresented on major London stages.
Monsoon, who still identifies as a drag queen despite being a trans female, uses dozens of vocal sounds and textures to convey Garland’s temper and vulnerability, and expresses herself with big brush strokes — more shoulder shrugs and moody swooshes than naturalism.
Jinkx Monsoon is astonishing as Judy Garland
It is hard to tell how much of that is a drag tendency to exaggerate, but either way, the role is a historical turning point in legitimising the art form. When she belts the numbers – including, yes, Somewhere Over the Rainbow – and the lights spell out J-U-D-Y behind her, Jinkx Monsoon is a dazzling feat. If her job is to briefly help a thousand queer people feel they have seen Judy Garland live, she achieves that on multiple occasions on press night.
Known from RuPaul’s Drag Race as a comedy queen, she is of course armed with bite: “You could have shoved cables in me and powered Manhattan,” Judy Garland says of how charged on pills she is. Liz Taylor, she says waspishly, was “so charming I wanted to run her over.” Monsoon has perhaps more licence than anyone has before to play up Garland’s acerbic bite and her temper, and thank goodness for drag for its unique ability – and licence – to show truth.
Cascading white linen
On a set cascading with white linen, like a tiered wedding cake, at the centre of which is a grand piano, Jacob Dudman makes you tense as the cold, calculating Mickey; Adam Filipe is perfectly gentle as queer piano player Anthony, the nondescript queer a thousand gay men transplant themselves upon in the role of Garland’s would-be saviour. Rupert Hands’ energetic direction provides frivolities aplenty; there is always something fabulous to look at. But mostly this is a radical tribute to a radical woman.
End of the Rainbow plays at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow