Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales Return to Seattle Rep with, Together Again, Again!
By S.E. Barcus
June 1, 2024
Jinkies!
Jinkx Monsoon has returned to her TRUE homebase once again, to SEATTLE (insert tug-of-war with Portland here), along with her sidekick, Major Scales, for another sequel to their 2014 Vaudevillians, the new show, Together Again, Again. In Again, Again, the jokes are fast and furious, the songs are clever, funny, and vocally impressive, and the whole night is just a complete joy. (Fear not — the below will contain some spoilers, but there’s hundreds more jokes in the show not mentioned!) The first rendition of this cabaret was performed in London, in 2022, steeped in the plague’s wake, but given the topical humor about current events, most of this show seems newly written.
When I last saw these two at The Rep in 2014, I recall talk of “oh dear, how would it play? Jinkx? At the stuffy Rep, making drag jokes to a house full of blue hairs?!” Some reportedly left the theater in disgust, while Jinkx frequently — bawdily – made jokes in that show about the supposed ‘controversy’ of The Rep daring to have her on such an esteeeeeemed stage, instead of over at Linda’s Tavern doing some burlesque homage to Drag Race or something. Well, that WHOLE clandestine homophobic vibe is long gone. Dead. As it is in most of America, in general … and good riddance. The Rep audience Saturday, June 1, was ecstatic and warmly welcoming of every single word (expletive or otherwise), and every single song (crude or otherwise), out of Jinkx’s mouth.
The show is set in the future, we are quickly told, by a robot on the video backdrop. “The year is 2065. The sun has exploded, a dystopian nightmare has been realized, and the world has been taken over by aliens. Hail Glarglax!” So, we get a sci-fi story this month! And it comes right off of Jinkx’s recent foray into the Dr. Who television series, where she played the deliciously evil musical villain, Maestro. (If you haven’t seen it – it’s not the greatest writing – but Jinkx is, alone, worth the watch.) Jinkx’s career is currently snowballing, in case you didn’t know. She also arrives just off a starring role as Audrey in the production of Little Shop of Horrors, Off-Broadway, and will perform with BenDeLaCreme on Valentine’s Day at Carnegie Hall in 2025 (unless they, like many of us, have to become ex-pats fleeing a fascist state…? … NEVER! Viva L’America!). Jinkx recently told the BBC that “Sci-Fi has always been queer!” And from Rocky Horror to David Bowie to Barbarella to The Dispossessed, on down, I’d have to agree!
Jinkx and Major come out on stage as much older, for one more show together. Jinkx’s entrance — from off-stage — is first seen by her creepy huge shadow against the stage’s background, like some Nosferatu. Then, as she jumps into her first song, “Hello, Jinkxy,” (set to “Hello, Dolly”), we instantly recall (in case we’d forgotten!) that this girl has the CHOPS. What an awesome singing voice, powerful, on key, with an excellent vibrato. And humor! Billie Eilish might have the whisper. Bjork the growl. But Jinkx has, bar-none, the ability to sing with sarcasm.
After the tune, we get the silly exposition; the set up. A little nod to Seattle, a little Space Needle / heroin needle joke. And then, sooo…. What have these two been doing over the decades? Well, Jinkx has done a series of ‘direct-to-Netflix’ reboots, recasting all the sexes as different sexes. (With an impressive laundry-litany of jokes here. Just one: Star Wars — “Lucy, I am your Mother.”) While Major Scales — always the butt of the jokes (sad-face-emoji) – has been trapped indefinitely at a Red Lobster Dinner Theater Spectacular since Jinkx left him for a solo career decades ago….
Throughout the show (produced for us during Pride Month no less!) there are plenty of nods to “These Gays” (including saying that phrase with a definitely-intended Jennifer Coolidge intonation). Nods to Little Edie here, to the ‘water off a duck’s back’ mantra there. A shout out to Dan Savage and the Pony bar in Capitol Hill, a song after a costume change where she transforms herself with a wig a la the “Wig in a Box” song, to some funny futuristic roasting of previous Drag Race contestants (oh, Alaska, how could you have done that to Michelle Visage?!). And a brief news story about “the entity formerly known as Lady Gaga”.
Oh, by the way – that wig truly does transform Jinkx. Not into ‘Miss Farrah Fawcett from TV,’ but into some freaky-but-awesome Gorillaz grrl, rapping “Clint Eastwood” lyrics to Scales’ cabaret piano. Which was apropos for a show set in 2065 (“I’m useless, but not for long, the future is coming on”).
Aaaaaand … this is what makes Jinkx, “Jinkx.” When we started watching her in 2013 on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5, we didn’t know her – we were just rooting for her because of Seattle. She could’ve been anybody. But then … she stood out immediately! And then?! Her Little Edie “Snatch Game” hit, and everyone in America knew she probably just won the season. Ru must have known that here was not just another snarky, dancing, lip-synching, make-up artist (“drag pageantry”), but an actual goddamn theater capital-A Artist. [Even as she asks herself, in “Again, Again,” why did she ever GET a useless theater degree?!? (Cornish, y’all!) “I might as well have majored in CRAYONS!”] Jinkx is wildly intelligent, confident, sexy, and with a deep knowledge and love of the history of drag — and can, yes, do the pageantry as well as any other drag star, too. But she can also cross over into popular culture with ease (as she did with Dr. Who, and with singing Radiohead’s “Creep” in the past). Tonight’s singing Damon Albarn-as-well-as-Damon Albarn just makes you remember once again how bad-ass this trans drag Jewish narcoleptic performer is. Like Ru herself – she is a phenom — an indisputable Star. Jinkx, of course, went on to win RuPaul’s contest a SECOND time in 2022 – facing off against past winners, no less (about which she had fun joking, with tonight’s song, “I Never Do Anything Twice”).
True to drag superstardom, her two dresses in the show are fabulous (no intermission, but one costume change), especially the black Elvira-y one; and the make-up and wigs are great. Jinkx’s face, all made up, can express exaggerated emotion from madness to misery more than 100 yards away. When she scolds us in the audience, her lips are as fiery red and eyes more bulging and glaring than Eddie Izzard’s in her prime. When she says something sad, like about how she’s just an old show-pony who refuses to be taken out back and put down, and the audience gives her the desired, “Awwww…,” she looks out at us with an exaggerated pout only matched by Villanelle in Killing Eve.
Over the decades, in this sci-fi future, Jinkx has essentially been a slut, with one-night stands with everyone from Timothée Chalamet to Barry Keoghan — that comes with an hysterical attempt to pronounce Barry’s last name. However, she has a much better time pronouncing “Lin-Manuel Miranda,” later in the show, sensually emphasizing the Spanish rolling-‘r’, several times, over and over, whispering, whispering, nearly putting you to sleep…. “Mirrrrrrrranda….” — before waking you up with the punchline: … “FUCKED HIM, TOO!”
By the way, the show proclaims it is “For Families,” while Jinkx makes jokes like, “he can shoot his butterbeer in my Chamber of Secrets anyday!” And … I wholeheartedly agree it’s for families. (There are two more even nastier Potter jokes there, btw.) It is 100% for families. One of our daughter’s grew up on Hedwig as a five-year-old, the other on RuPaul Season 5 as a five-year-old, and they are the most compassionate, funny, smartest ladies I know today. (I’m biased of course.) And the fact that this show’s claims, that it is “for families,” might just make the Texas or Florida GOP apoplectic … makes me smile. As Jinkx recently told Variety, “I used to try to find diplomatic ways to talk about this, and now, truly how I feel is: Who gives a fuck what bigots think? A more optimistic way and idealistic way of looking at this is that popular opinion is not on their side. They are a very loud group and they’re growing louder as they grow smaller.” Ohhhh, Jinkx Monsoon – what is not to love about you!? (And check out The Rep’s suggested reading list for the show. Kudos, Rep. This season has been your most eclectic, and experimental in form, in a long time. … I hope this was supported by ticket sales…!)
Hmmmm…. What else to say…?
Oh, yes! “Major Scales was also there” (as the future video news jokes). Scales is definitely the “supporting actor” in the show, the sounding board. The ‘straight man,’ as they say. And to his credit, he plays it without fuss, with only professional, perfect set-ups, all while being a kindly and decent pianist, to boot. He plays mostly simple oom-pah, oom-pah sorta schtick (ok, sometimes an oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah…); relatively simple 1-4-5 chord melodies, probably so he can sing along, as well, and not have to concentrate as much on the keys…. His piano comedy is not so much the sophisticated musical jokes of Victor Borge nor the silly slapstick piano playing of Chico Marx, but rather the funny, relatively simple, clever songwriting of Tom Lehrer. I do, however, want to give him props for the song, “What would you do?” It had sweet, sad dissonances within it, reminiscent of Sondheim. Very nice.
Oh, there are soooo many more clever jokes, like “condescending” to the audience with vocabulary words. And nicely paced physical comedy, like when Jinkx never had anything handed to her, EVER! And then — the climax! The “Boss-fight“. When the two – who have been upstaging and irritating each other throughout the night — are about to finally hash it out … they turn, instead, to their obvious theater backgrounds by … going all Brechty verfremdungseffekty on us. They decide to just skip any “climacting” and denouement, altogether, and conclude that, shouldn’t tonight, just being together — singing and laughing and having fun — be enough?
With Jinkx? Yes.
They conclude with a sweet final song, “You’re Timeless To Me,” and tap dance out, as only old rickety folks know how to do. (Although all is still destroyed by the Glarglaxians in the end – OF COURSE! — so don’t expect an encore!)
“Get Ready Bitches ‘Cause It’s Monsoon Season!” is what Jinkx proclaimed as she was crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race in Season 5. Well, it’s been a slowly increasing pitter-patter (delayed, in part, by the fucking plague), but Jinkx is now starting to truly feel more like a downpour. I think Monsoon Season is really here now. So, get to The Rep, ASAP, and check her out. And then, Jinkx and Major – back off to Off-Broadway with you, and this new show, and knock ‘em dead like you did with your “Vaudevillians”. And then onward, Jinkxy, to what I’m sure will be yet more interesting artistic growth and experimentation and hysteria.
She’s fierce, yo.
Copyright 6-1-2024
S.E. Barcus 
Leave a comment