All Hail Jinkx Monsoon, Queen of Pirates! The Penzance Musical

The Queen of All Queens has become the Pirate Queen! Just two years after making her Broadway debut in Chicago, Jinkx Monsoon is playing Ruth in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s joyful revival of Pirates of Penzance.

Rechristened Pirates! The Penzance Musical, the modern update on Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic 19th century opera moves the swashbuckling action, romance and double-crossing to Jazz Age New Orleans — an exotic locale where Monsoon’s put-upon nanny remains desperate to find love, acceptance and, just maybe, a happy ending as the lone woman amongst a band of hilariously unreliable rogues.

Also starring Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King, David Hyde Pierce as Major-General Stanley, Nicholas Barasch as Frederic and Samantha Williams as Mabel, the madcap musical adventure is playing a limited run at the Todd Haimes Theatre through July 27 and is currently in the running for Best Revival of a Musical at the upcoming 2025 Tony Awards.

The recognition from the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League is something Monsoon feels particularly proud of, telling Ticketmaster from her dressing room backstage: “I love the nomination because it’s for the whole company. This show, you know, there’s headliners in it, there’s principal characters, but this is an ensemble show. There’s no weak link in this cast or crew. We’re all really good at what we do!”

Below, the drag legend discusses giving the cast-aside Ruth a new ending to her story, finding a home for herself on Broadway, fighting censorship with art and the power of drag. Plus, she weighs in on the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and offers up an instantly iconic tease about which legendary character she’ll be channeling with her Tonys look.

You have been on such an incredible roll over the past few seasons — from making your Broadway debut as Mama Morton in Chicago to playing Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors and now to playing Ruth in Pirates! The Penzance Musical. How does it feel to be conquering Broadway one role at a time?

Oh, you know, it’s very affirming to have worked for a long time to wind up here, but then once I got here, it felt like there was a place waiting for me. The way that I’ve been welcomed into this Broadway theater community, I’ve never experienced anything like it except for doing my work in the queer community. Like with The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show, that is such a generative, ensemble-based show, and we create a new show every year.

Pirates! was so similar to that, where we all just got into a room on day one and started just working our way through the show, everyone bringing their individual talents and skills and offering up different ideas. We had an amazing creative and directorial team that guided all of this amazing talent and energy, and together we created a show that’s like a celebration every night. It’s like a big party.

I imagine your love for musical theater pre-dates your drag career?

It all just kind of is one, you know? My love of music began at, I don’t know…before I could talk, I was singing melodies and stuff. My mom describes me as, like, when I was a toddler, I used to tell her when she was flat or sharp. Or I would tell her to stop singing ’cause my mom’s so tone deaf and I would take over the song and just sing it to her. I was a very sassy little thing. So music was just always in my life.

The first musical I saw was the touring production of RENT when I was like nine years old. It all went completely over my head. But I saw that there was a role that I could play. Like, I always knew I was different. I mean, as far back as I can remember, I knew I was queer. I knew I wanted to grow up to be a woman. And I knew that there were going to be certain roles that I might be able to play someday. And Angel was one of ’em. And then I ended up playing Angel in RENT in Seattle the same year that I did Drag Race the first time. So theater just spoke to me as a place where someone like me could thrive. I knew what was different about me, but my whole life I saw a home for me in theater.

Now, drag just became another way for me to do theater all the time. Like, by high school age I was in the plays, and I would often get passed [over] in male roles. And then I would become obsessed with the source material of the play we were working on, but I would want to recast myself. So in my drag shows on the weekends, I would build shows based on the work I was doing at school and put myself in the role that I wanted to do. So when we were doing Into the Woods in high school, I was playing Jack, but at my drag show on the weekends, I was the Witch. So drag and theater kind of just always went hand in hand for me…and I’ve never felt so happy as when I’m on stage and I know I’m f–kin’ doing a good job.

Ruth is the first role that you’ve originated on Broadway. How was creating her as a character for Pirates! different from stepping into the shoes of, say, Mama Morton or Audrey?

Well, it was really nice to get to develop her track through the show with me in mind. You know, like, the dances were choreographed for my…physical capabilities plus my knack for physical comedy. And the songs were plotted in a way that, throughout the show, I’m building momentum with each musical performance.

And I gotta say — what’s funny is when I’ve stepped into roles, those roles have been pretty similar to me, the human being. Or me, Jinkx Monsoon the stage persona. Like Mama Morton and Jinkx, you can see a lot of overlap there. And Audrey and Jinkx, you can see a lot of overlap there. Partially because these characters came into my life at the same time I was doing drag. I mean, Audrey was always in my life, but they were influences in the kind of drag character I developed. Ruth was nowhere in my zeitgeist throughout my life, other than my compulsory knowledge of Gilbert and Sullivan as a musical theater professional. So Ruth, for the first character that I’ve originated, she is the farthest away from me. We overlap the least, I think. And rather than Ruth being someone I can kind of take that side step into, I really had to get to Ruth.

You make your grand entrance in the show with “When Fredric Was a Little Lad,” which really sets up the musical’s entire narrative. How do you balance the sheer amount of exposition in that number with all of the physical comedy that you’re doing?

Oh! Well, the way you do anything, really, is just go to the text. And the better the text, the less hard you have to work, right? If the text is good, all you have to do is make sure you’re telling the story and that the audience is getting it. I tend to beef up weak text with bigger physical comedy, but Gilbert and Sullivan plus Rupert Holmes, this is not weak text; this is strong text. So the physical comedy is all just to support the text. And the text has to be the number one priority because of the exposition you mentioned. Like, if I were singing a song about nothing, I could do whatever, I could make it all physical comedy. But I’m singing a song that’s telling you the stakes of the show and how Frederic got into this weird position he’s in, so I’ve gotta make sure the story rings clearer than anything else. So nothing can upstage the story. And that’s just kind of the rule of thumb. And

It’s a wonderful privilege to be a storyteller in this show, because there’s so much going on and I like to think when I’m on stage, since Ruth is hard of hearing, she’s really leaning into what everyone’s saying. And then that way, the audience is kind of always getting the story through me. Like, Ruth is always looking at whoever’s talking, just because of her circumstances. So if the audience happens to look at me because I’m dazzling and mesmerizing, and I’m looking at the Pirate King, then they look over at the Pirate King, too. So I have this honor of being kind of like the sherpa of the audience in this show.

This particular revival is set in New Orleans. How does that change in setting influence the music and the show’s overall style?

Oh, in every way. I like to say, when it came to the revising of this show, the rule seemed to be ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Like “Modern Major-General” plus David Hyde Pierce equals perfect, right? You don’t need to do much to that. But what I love about the New Orleans jazz feel of the songs that did get a big facelift is it becomes a lot more accessible to a broader audience, and an audience that might have turned away from classical operetta aesthetic is now drawn in by the sound of a Dixieland ragtime band. It’s amazing. The orchestra’s just incredible, the arrangements are incredible, and I think they really help that job of telling the story. There’s not so much decoration to get in the way of the storytelling. But it’s still absolutely gorgeous because the source material is so strong that, you know, you can’t really mess it up.

Ed. note: When David Hyde Pierce hosted SNL in 1995, he actually did a “Modern Major General” parody during his monologue that is an absolute must-watch. Foreshadowing!

Ruth also get a big song in Act II with “Alone, and Yet Alive,” which I didn’t realize until afterwards is taken from Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 opera The Mikado.

Yeah! Well, again, this one is one of the songs that really got a re-tuning by Rupert Holmes and Joseph Joubert. And I think without saying anything, I had a lot of influence in the writing of the song — just in the way that Ruth got developed through rehearsal. This song is giving you Ruth’s internal monologue of how she gets past being ultimately rejected. When she experiences, just, rejection after rejection after rejection and then she has no purpose in life, she has to figure out, “OK, so my one purpose in life has been taken from me. Now what?” And Rupert wrote me these gorgeous lyrics that help you see the course that Ruth takes in our show from nanny to Pirate Queen. She really takes charge of her life by the end of the show, in a way that I’m really happy got written for this character that kind of just gets the shaft at the end of the story, usually.

 

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Going back to David Hyde Pierce for a moment, he was an absolute riot as the Major-General. Did you get to watch him work through “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” in rehearsals at all?

Oh yeah! That’s another beautiful thing about this company and the Roundabout Theatre is that we were all in the room together for almost everything. Of course, there was a lot of divide and conquer — the ensemble would be learning dance while we’d be learning music or something — but I got to see a lot of the work done in other people’s numbers and see how it developed and evolved throughout the rehearsal process.

But what I’ve got to say about David is, it’s so clearly him playing a role that he knew his whole life he’d be playing. Like, in my mind, someday I will play Mrs. Lovett. I just know that to be fact, right? And when I get there, it’s gonna look like I already played her or I already rehearsed before everyone else, but it’s just because I’ve been thinking about her in the back of my mind for so long.

I believe this to be true with David and the Major-General. ‘Cause he came in day one pretty damn sure of who the Modern Major-General was and just continued to build and evolve upon that, and continue to let his Modern Major-General be affected by all of our characters as they got developed. And that’s what a really generous actor does: he comes in with a really clear sense of his character, but doesn’t close himself off from the ability to discover new things by just being present with all of us. And that guy’s present.

The show ends with “We’re All From Someplace Else.” I have to say, the song’s message of inclusivity and acceptance really struck me much deeper than I was expecting.

I feel very similarly.

I know you’ve been open about changing your name, and really coming into your identity as transfeminine non-binary in the past few years. I just wondered if the message of that song hits any differently for you given the current political climate and, honestly, everything that’s happening in this country right now.

Oh yeah, I think for all of us. What I love about this company and this show is that we really — our show about inclusivity and diversity is inclusive and very diverse, right? You know, we’re not just saying it, the cast reflects that as well. [In “We’re All From Someplace Else,”] I have the line, “The result of this migration to a patchwork, scratchwork nation is we all are something else.” And I really think about that as Ruth saying, “Look around, no two of us are exactly the same. So we’ve got to stop operating in a world where we think that that’s the way it should be,” you know?

At this point in history, I’m really, really grateful to be working in a comedy — I’m grateful to be working in theater, period, because of our ability to still be honest with one another. But to be working in a comedy and helping people laugh right now. And the message of our show is not buried deep, you know? You don’t have to peel away the layers. And I think that’s ringing true with a lot of shows right now: we are using theater to communicate with people while we get censored pretty much everywhere else, right? Artists are still using art. And there’s so many people who just won’t get it ’cause they’re not looking for it. But those who are looking for it are gonna see it very easily. And I think that’s what we need right now. We need to be rallying one another and just getting the message out no matter how we do it.

Obviously you’re so busy, but have you been keeping up at all on All Stars 10?

Here’s the thing, I keep up on social media, so I know the gist of things. And I’ve always believed you can know the ending to something and still enjoy watching it. So the spoilers don’t matter to me, ’cause what I’m more interested in is watching my friends all play together. But I know that some dear friends are on, and I hope they’re doing well. And if not, whatever! It’s just a TV show, ladies! You’ll be back on sooner or later! [Cackles]

How does becoming the Pirate Queen compare to being The Queen of All Queens?

You know, I like to call myself The Queen Amongst Queens because there’s just no way…I mean, even RuPaul doesn’t represent every facet of drag. And I don’t want that responsibility because the beauty of drag is our diversity and the way that we are able to come from anywhere and be anyone and anything, and create the person we want to be. We all are our own monarchs, we all rule our own kingdoms. But being a two-time winner of the world’s biggest drag competition at present, it just fills me with affirmation that you can do what you want to do, in the way you want to do it, if you’re not afraid of the hard work. If you’re not afraid of the rejection along the way that’s gonna happen. I really love that Drag Race has given me this place to connect with my audiences worldwide so that when I go to Broadway, they follow me. And when I go on tour with BenDeLaCreme for the Holiday Show, they come find us.

I love that Drag Race has given me the opportunity and built this path for me to do what I’ve always done with drag, but at the biggest level possible. And getting to be a transfeminine drag performer on Broadway, and having it be my drag name in the playbill and having everyone who doesn’t know who the f–k Jinkx Monsoon is have to Google it, and then find out I’m one hell of a drag queen in addition to what they just saw — that’s why I didn’t start going by my new chosen name on Broadway. I felt like it was very important to keep Jinkx Monsoon in the mouths of my audiences right now. Just if nothing else, as a counter to the other headlines out there.

Do you have everything figured out for the night of the Tonys yet?

I know what dress I’m wearing!

Could you give just a tease?

[Singing] Come out, come out wherever you are/ And meet a young lady who fell from the star…” [Laughs]