Review: END OF THE RAINBOW, starring Jinkx Monsoon

Hollywood legend Judy Garland is preparing to take the stage at the infamous Talk of the Town theatre-restaurant in 1968. In her room at The Ritz Hotel, she unravels. The star’s glitz and glamour dim, and the harsh reality of what it takes to make it in Hollywood transpires. The show must go on, but Garland is fighting a whole array of demons and she would pass away the following year in London, overdosing on barbiturates.

Peter Quilter’s play (with music) is genre-questioning and tonally indecisive. Former drag queen turned Broadway star Jinkx Monsoon could have taken on the role of a lifetime, but the lack of cohesion in Rupert Hands’s direction fails her. Fresh from an overseas stint in Oh, Mary!, she seems stuck in a different project. Where her co-stars Jacob Dudman and Adam Felipe deliver reflective and sombre portrayals, she is firmly set on parody.

Though her farcical characterisation is endlessly amusing and her sharp wit shines with Quilter’s one-liners, there’s a jarring dissonance between her style and the content. We meet Garland as a has-been. Her name may still carry some weight, but she’s broke and unreliable. Her young fiancé and new manager, Mickey (Dudman), is opportunistic, arrogant, and unsympathetic to her struggles. He strives to make her reason, but his methods are mean.

On the other corner of the ring, her pianist Anthony (Felipe) tries hard to help her. Empathetic and very suspicious of Mickey, he soothes her with undiluted affection and support. Both men are met with Monsoon’s firecracker temperament, which is nestled between caricature and panto darling. She might be hilariously overdramatic and OTT, but there’s a shocking superficiality to her.

Garland is reduced to shallow jadedness. Quilter’s writing doesn’t do much to avoid this: it’s unrefined, brash, and loud, opting to represent addiction as a bratty attitude. The diva’s stunted emotional sphere is under-analysed in favour of camp entertainment with a slightly darker edge. Monsoon slurs her words and wobbles about, but it’s only heartbreaking to think about the reasons Garland would be in that state. These lie in the implicit parts of the piece, the information the public will already have, rather than any sort of subtext present in the script.

Dudman and Felipe’s roles are probably meant to corral Garland’s outbursts, but even the moments when she bares her soul tip into histrionics. Her shortfall of subtlety unfortunately weighs everybody down, yet her comic delivery has enough panache to be charming. Her big personality is matched by a remarkable, controlled voice, and the musical numbers are where Monsoon truly impresses. Taking her performance down a notch would reframe it as a fragile, jaded woman who didn’t get the help she needed instead of merely a camp figure who pandered to the gays.

You will probably love the production if you’re a Jinkx Monsoon fan, but it’s not a great play. It’s too meandering and self-indulgent, other than way too long for what it is. We sit and watch Garland beg for drugs and booze for over two hours plus interval, saying very little with a lot of dialogue. Monsoon’s impression has a very similar affectation to Garland’s, but it doesn’t offer much depth. 

The work is undoubtedly at home in Walthamstow: the original architecture of the venue hugs Jasmine Swan’s set design tenderly. The opulence of the proscenium encases the white pleated stage, while a piano sits in the centre. A curtain hides a stunning jazz band away for much of the time. It looks incredible. In the same way that Garland was chewed up and spat back out by Hollywood, it’s a shame that the profundity of the story is swallowed whole by its accidental comedy.

End of the Rainbow runs at Soho Theatre Walthamstow until 21 June.

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