Review – The Vaudevillians
If you come to the Vaudevillians expecting a drag show, you might be disappointed. Jinkx Monsoon, winner of RuPaul’s talent quest Drag Race, is so feminine that he is barely recognisable as a drag queen. What is blindingly obvious is that Jinkx is captivating – a shining star of cabaret. With impeccable comic delivery and a killer voice (not to mention those legs!), Jinkx lights up the stage and leaves the audience in stitches.
Ms Kitty Witless (Jinkx) and Dr Dan von Dandy (Major Scales) were one of the hottest acts on the 1920s vaudeville scene. 90 years after a tragic accident in Antarctica left them frozen alive, the luminaries have thawed out (thanks to global warming) and are back to reclaim their original hit songs from the modern-day pop stars who pilfered them.
On this oh-so-plausible premise, Witless and von Dandy recount old-timey tales about their drug-addled days opening for Joan Rivers and collaborating with Henrik Ibsen in 1920s opium dens and speakeasies. The hilariously scathing husband-wife banter is accompanied by vaudeville versions of pop songs that blow their ‘covers’ out of the water. Witless is quite at home in her new era, where women can divorce their husbands and are no longer forced to use quail feathers as contraception. Well, she was a suffragette back in the day after all.
Reimagining everything from Madonna to Daft Punk, the show peaks in a blistering rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” (complete with a nod to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). This is cabaret at its best – witty, hilarious and oozing with talent. Do yourself a favour and go see it.
