★★★★★

Review by Natalia Milne. Venue 3. Assembly George Square Gardens – Palais du Variete

It is most surprising that coming fresh off of her Ru Paul’s Drag Race All Stars win, Jinkx Monsoon would be using her Edinburgh Fringe debut to prove to us all that she’s still got it.

The show takes place in the Spiegeltent Palais du Variété. It is a vintage-style cabaret tent laid out like a musical salon; a venue that is a perfect location for this show.  The red sequins of Jinkx’s dress and her billowing head piece fit in perfectly with the velvet drapes and gave the sense that we had travelled back in time to the heyday of cabaret performance.  

With her musical partner Major Scales on the piano, Jinkx’s hour-long set is packed with ribald humour in addition to her incredibly powerful voice. We were treated to a mixture of her personal stories and anecdotes, her original music and cover songs and lip-synching, as well as hilarious riffs with Major Scales. The whole performance was slick and polished, the transitions seamless.

One of the many highlights of the show is Jinkx performing a rendition of her original song Cartoons and Vodka whilst the music video plays alongside. The video pays homage to a host of classic cartoons such as the Power Puff Girls, Dexter’s laboratory and The Jetsons to name a few. It is an astonishing piece of art to watch while Jinkx croons.

The song Just Me (The Gender Binary Blues) involves music to a series of incidents Jinkx has experienced as a transfeminine nonbinary individual. She powerfully and eloquently sets out the hypocrisy of those who seek to police who can enter a public bathroom. Her message is clear; that despite the difficulties,  there is so much to be gained from living life authentically.

By the time she delivered a snippet of her iconic Judy Garland impression she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand. For the uninitiated I would highly recommend looking up her Snatch Game performance on the most recent series of Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

The show as a whole is intended to take our minds off the pandemic years and sprinkle some sparkle into our lives. Well, it definitely does that, and fans of drag, fans of Jinkx (and those new to both) have to see her incredible performance to believe it, as she proves to us without a shadow of doubt that she’s still got it, she’s got it in spades.