Peter Quilter’s play End of the Rainbow premiered in Sydney in 2005 and went on to enjoy acclaimed runs in the West End and on Broadway.

Set in London in 1968, End of the Rainbow tells the story of the final months of Judy Garland’s life, leading up to her death at the age of forty-seven.

At the legendary Talk of the Town, Garland readies herself for a series of concerts that will both captivate and haunt. The world adores her, yet behind the glittering spotlight lies a fierce struggle for control, survival, and the relentless drive to perform at whatever the cost.

Garland (who played Dorothy in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) spent her life being forced onto the stage. At the age of just sixteen, she was being force-fed one pill after another: whatever was needed to get her to do the job at hand. Sadly, this pattern followed Judy all the way to the end of her life. She was still surrounding herself with enablers who cared more about the money she could make by performing than her actual well-being.

When we meet her at The Ritz, she is broke and beleaguered, propped up by pills and torn between two men: Mickey Deans, the calculating younger fiancé who will become her fifth (and final) husband and Anthony, her devoted pianist who loves her the way her queer fans have always loved her – unconditionally and with full knowledge of the cost.

I’ll be honest with you: I’ve never really watched much RuPaul’s Drag Race, and so my familiarity with Jinkx Monsoon is not the same as most of the people sitting in that audience. I did see her last year on Broadway in Pirates! The Penzance Musical and thought she was wonderful. Her roles in Chicago (Mama Morton), Little Shop of Horrors (Audrey), and Oh, Mary! (Mary Todd Lincoln) all seem like an excellent fit for her but taking on Judy Garland may have been a stretch too far.

I had been genuinely excited. Monsoon is known for her Drag Race impression of Garland and the idea of her embodying the role properly on stage felt thrillingly full-circle. But by the time the interval arrived, I was bracing myself for an announcement that she would be unable to continue due to vocal issues. No such announcement came. Her voice, however, was nowhere near what this role demands and as I overheard someone say in the ice cream queue, you can’t build an icon on a caricature.

Judy Garland was tiny in every way: small and frail, a fragile creature but her voice was enormous, right up until the end of her life. That voice was the thing. It is what made her an icon and what made her tragedy so devastating.

Where a performer like Tracie Bennett (of the original West End and Broadway production) hit the nail precisely on the head in her portrayal of Judy, Monsoon seems too often to be playing it for laughs rather than heartache. The comedy is there, certainly and she has tremendous charisma. But Judy Garland’s story is not ultimately a comedy and when the show reaches for its most devastating moments, the vocals just aren’t quite there to carry them.

The rest of the cast fare considerably better. Adam Filipe, recently seen in the starring role of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, is genuinely adorable as Anthony – Judy’s long-time friend and pianist and perhaps the only man who ever truly loved her, despite being gay. He brings warmth and stillness to the role in a way that gives the show its most genuinely tender moments.

Understudy Joshy Alody stepped into the role of Mickey Deans on the night I attended and did so seamlessly – cold, controlled and quietly menacing in all the right ways.

The new Soho Theatre Walthamstow is a beautiful space and the set design for this production is exquisite. White-linen steps cascade down the stage, with a white curtain that opens to reveal the band and there is something quietly poetic about the whole thing, because it looks not unlike the interior of a coffin. Given that we are watching the final chapter of Judy Garland’s life, that brilliance was not lost on me.

End of the Rainbow is, at its core, a story about what the world demands of women who dare to be extraordinary and the price that is exacted when they cannot keep paying. Quilter explores it through Judy’s dynamic with her two attendant men – the exploiter and the devotee and finds in that triangle something both intimate and universal.

The parallels with the entertainment industry today are eerily, sadly familiar: you only have to think of Britney Spears, clearly off the rails while the world sits back and watches, to feel how little has changed.

Whether Monsoon is quite the Judy Garland this show deserves is, for me at least, a question that lingered long after the final bow. But the audience took to their feet in unison as Jinkx took her bow – proving that the audience for this show got exactly what they wanted from it.

But as I found myself downloading the original cast recording for the journey home, I thought about this glittering production, this heartbreaking story, where somewhere over the rainbow, the voice got lost.

★★★

Review by West End Wilma
Photos by Danny Kaan

End of the Rainbow plays at Soho Theatre Walthamstow until 21 June 2026.