Jinkx Monsoon is Judy Garland,” screams the advertising for Soho Theatre Walthamstow’s new staging of End of the Rainbow. On the surface, it’s punchy and unconventional casting: Garland, legend of Old Hollywood, played by a trans woman of reality TV fame. That’s not to sell Monsoon short – her two victorious runs on RuPaul’s Drag Race (in 2013 and as part of the all-winners series in 2022) have made her bona fide drag royalty, and a Broadway star in her own right. So in another way, there are few apter roles for her than Garland – the ur-icon of gay pop culture, a totemic figure in the queer community to this day. The two women have lived lives of “parallel circumstances”, as Monsoon will go on to explain. “It makes sense for me to play Judy Garland. It just does,” she grins. “Ask anybody.”
Today, the 38-year-old is sitting opposite me in the corner of a rehearsal room above the theatre. She’s wearing a vintage-looking jacket and her eyes are fretted with swipes of deep green. Her hair is red. That is to say, she looks nothing whatsoever like Garland – though by the time she steps onstage, she’ll have transformed. In some ways, Monsoon requires no transformation. She shares the Meet Me in St Louis star’s powerhouse vibrato, and she’s a keen mimic: Drag Race fans will already know she’s got a formidable dinner-party Garland in her back pocket. (In the 2022 series, Monsoon won Drag Race’s “Snatch Game” round with impersonations of Garland and the actor Natasha Lyonne.)
