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Jinkx Monsoon is blessed with charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. After becoming an audience favourite on ‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race’ she was deservedly crowned America’s Next Drag Superstar in 2013; and three years on, the Soho audience is more than familiar with her status. Here, she stars as Kitty Witless, put-upon wife and one half of The Vaudevillians, a musical duo frozen alive in ‘nineteen-bigotry-two’.
At long last thawed out, they’re here to claim all our smash hits as their own. ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ is actually about the invention of the iron, ‘Toxic’ is an ode to Marie Curie and ‘…Baby One More Time’ is really a ditty about domestic abuse. It’s all wonderfully silly, and Jinkx – in her pretty pink tea dress – is like your favourite drunk auntie. Veering between saccharine and growly, she can be as elegant as a swan until she’s decidedly not, and then goofy: this wonderfully manic drag queen has the audience eating out of her perfectly manicured hand. Though that’s not to ignore her cabaret co-star, Major Scales, a delightfully dapper gentleman who – as Jinkx changes into something a little more sequinned – wittily holds the audience with ease.
Throughout the show the music is as funny as it is chair-dancing-inducing. The Charleston meets hip hop in a brilliantly camp rendition of ‘Let Me Clear My Throat’. In another number the tension slowly builds until you’re face down, singing along with the immortal ‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified...’ For the finale, ‘Gimme That Thing’ forms an unlikely relationship with Kanye’s ‘Stronger – then it’s all over and you’re spewed out of The Vaudevillians’ weird, wonderful world pondering what just happened.