The London England Theatre Review: Jinkx Monsoon delivers a thrilling and emotionally bruising portrait of Judy Garland in Rupert Hands’ haunting revival
By Ross
“Madness,” our descriptive word for this whirlwind London Theatre Journey, continues to shadow us from beginning to end in unexpected ways. After confronting obsession, repression, and fractured desire in our first show of seven, Equus, the last stop of this theatrical tour led not into mythology or horror, but into the glittering wreckage of fame itself. Peter Quilter’s 2005 End of the Rainbow finds the iconic Judy Garland colliding with all those around her in 1968 London, only months before her death. Clinging desperately to performance, applause, and survival, Judy soars and fumbles with equal energy. By the time the lights came up inside London’s Soho Theatre Walthamstow, that emotional collision between brilliance and collapse hangs thick in the air.
The first image is a man sitting alone at a grand piano centre stage, quietly tinkering with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” We all lean forward instinctively. How could we not? As Adam Filipe’s Anthony carries a nervous energy from the very beginning, sensing danger before it fully arrives. Then she enters. Or rather, she sneaks in. Hidden partially from our sightlines, moving with playful unpredictability and exhausted fragility, Jinkx Monsoon (Broadway’s Pirates!) slips into her Judy Garland while Anthony quickly ducks beneath the piano in what feels both comic and an instinctively defensive response, as though experience has taught him exactly how quickly affection can turn into fury, shouting, and flying glass. It is an electrifying introduction, sharply silhouetted against the darkness of our knowledge, and from that moment onward, the audience is utterly locked onto Monsoon’s extraordinary performance.
Set during Garland’s infamous London residency at the Talk of the Town, Quilter’s play, as directed with clarity by Rupert Hands (Palladium’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), charts the exhausting final chapter of a woman still fiercely driven to entertain despite the addictions, emotional instability, and exploitative relationships threatening to destroy her. Rupert Hands’ production wisely understands that Garland’s story only works if the performer at its centre can balance spectacle and devastation simultaneously. Monsoon majestically and magically accomplishes this with astonishing precision. Her Judy is hilarious, manipulative, insecure, magnetic, furious, flirtatious, and heartbreakingly frightened, often within the span of a single exchange or glance.
Known internationally for her work on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Monsoon moves far beyond imitation here. She captures Garland’s rhythms, wit, vocal textures, and physical mannerisms beautifully, but what makes the performance so captivating is the emotional honesty underneath the music and the iconography. The audience does not spend the evening admiring an impersonation, because somewhere beneath that imaginary rainbow, Jinkx expertly disappears entirely and Judy takes over the room. Every sharp joke lands with defensive desperation behind it, and every song feels like both an act of survival and a plea for love.
“You think it’s easy up there? It’s hard enough entertaining these people. You want me to be polite?” Garland snaps at one point, and Monsoon delivers the line with blistering force and exhausted self-awareness. The room hangs on every word she speaks and every note she sings. Her musical performances arrive like emotional detonations, filling the theatre with the intoxicating contradiction that defined Garland herself: astonishing control battling complete collapse, all tangled up in a microphone cord that seems to have a destructive mind all of its own. The vocals soar beautifully while still allowing the strain and damage underneath to remain visible.
Jacob Dudman (“The Choral“) plays Mickey Deans, Garland’s younger fiancé and self-appointed protector. Dudman brings a stoic steadiness to the role, grounding Judy during her spirals and confrontations, though the script never fully deepens Mickey beyond his functional position inside Garland’s orbit. There are moments where his concern feels genuine, but there is also an emotional opacity that leaves the relationship frustratingly difficult to fully invest in. By contrast, the connection between Judy and Anthony easily takes over and becomes the production’s emotional centrepiece. Filipe (Watermill’s Whistle Down the Wind) gives the evening its quiet soul, crafting a layered portrait of loyalty, exhaustion, tenderness, love, and fear. Anthony understands Judy’s brilliance perhaps better than anyone around her, yet he also sees the devastating cost attached to it. Their scenes together carry a bruised intimacy that grows increasingly moving as the evening unfolds.
The production itself is elegantly assembled. Jasmine Swan’s set and costume design beautifully evoke both the glamour and impersonality of Judy’s London hotel suite and stage, turning her “too small” hotel suite into yet another stage she cannot escape, while Prema Mehta’s lighting shifts delicately between backstage melancholy and concert hall radiance. Fabian Aloise’s movement direction proves especially effective during the musical sequences, where Judy’s body often appears caught between performance instinct and physical exhaustion. Under the musical supervision of Leo Munby (Hope Mill’s Cinderella) and the musical direction of Nick Barstow (Lyric Hammersmith’s Sing Street!), the songs emerge organically from the drama rather than interrupting it. Fred Double (RSC’s Two Gentlemen of Verona) also provides strong support in multiple smaller roles, particularly as the observant hotel porter and newsreader who hover around Garland’s increasingly unstable world, sometimes carrying the load or just responding to it with wide-eyed horror.
This was my first visit to the glorious Soho Theatre Walthamstow, tucked deep into a neighbourhood of London I had never previously explored, and the journey itself oddly mirrors the experience of the play. It takes time to arrive there from the West End, carrying you gradually away from polished theatrical tourism and into something that feels more intimate, vulnerable, and alive. The theatre is gorgeous, perfectly suited to this kind of emotionally immersive storytelling. Quietly, I couldn’t help but think that the production would fit beautifully inside Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, where audiences are already flocking to musical intimacy of a similarly electrifying kind. Yet, there is something special about witnessing this portrayal of Garland in London, the city where these final performances actually took place, and I couldn’t have felt more blessed to be in attendance.
What makes End of the Rainbow so compelling is its refusal to smooth out Garland’s contradictions. The play allows her to be selfish, cruel, manipulative, dazzling, funny, generous, and deeply wounded all at once. Monsoon embraces every one of those jagged edges fearlessly. She understands that Judy Garland remained beloved not because she appeared invincible, but because audiences could always see the vulnerable human being trembling underneath the spotlight.
Watching Garland sing triumphantly beneath stage lights, that first nervous moment at the piano, with Anthony hiding beneath it, echoes through my thoughts, as we join with our iconic Judy searching desperately for stability she could never quite get a hold of. “Madness” may have become the unofficial theme of our theatre marathon, but here, it takes on a painfully human shape: a woman exhausting herself while trying so hard to remain luminous for audiences who needed her light almost as much as she needed their applause. Jinkx Monsoon meets that tragedy head-on with a performance of staggering emotional clarity, transforming Garland not into a distant legend, but into a fragile, funny, furious soul fighting to stay standing beneath the weight of her own myth.
