Early in their performance on Thursday night (December 5) at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, New York, drag stars Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme told their crowd of a few thousand fans that they intended to do things a little differently this year.
Explore
Check out the latest videos, charts and news
Check out the latest videos, charts and news
The pair have appeared together in various iterations of their annual Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show over the past seven years, with each successive show becoming more involved, plot-driven and deeply meta than the last. Their 2023 show, as they point out during this year's production, revolved around their own show turning on and trying to kill them.
So for 2024, the dynamic duo told their audience that they just wanted to keep things simple — some sweet fun, some good laughs and that winning combination of parody “a pop song you've heard on the radio all year, plus Christmas ,” as DeLa put it. Nothing fancy, just an easy, simple holiday show.
What followed, while of course not at all what the duo described at the start of their performance, proved exactly why Drag Race The graduates make such a perfect couple on stage. In two acts and two hours, Jinkx and DeLa managed to not only encapsulate the manic brilliance of their now-historic run together, but also deftly (and often crudely) address audiences still reeling from the latter's political chaos. month.
Fans of The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show will have a lot to celebrate with this year's iteration, as the pair continue the tradition of building a light-hearted narrative around a Christmas-themed concept. This time, Jinkx happily informs the audience that he is making one Nutcracker riff (or “glutton,” as DeLa mistakenly calls it), as the pair shrink to toy size and take part in the much-loved Christmas ballet. It's a welcome change, seeing the usually grumpy Jinx get excited about the holidays, while the often upbeat Della gets to poke fun at the age-old ballet at every opportunity.
Song parodies are back too, and arguably better than ever. Jinkx and DeLa once again fuse their own original songs with new versions of holiday classics, Americana standards and a slew of 2024 pop hits. A now-off-Broadway Monsoon combines both her musical and comedic chops in early standout performance of “Secular” (on his tempo Bad's “Popular”), as she's happy to leave behind the more Judeo-Christian aspects of the season. Meanwhile, DeLa impresses with a rendition of Beyoncé's “Texas Hold'Em” that sees the star wail about missing snow in a globalized winter of unseasonably warm weather — although, when it happens so much, she really shouldn't we call it “absurd,” as DeLa points out.
The standout run from the show, however, comes in the form of the pair desperately trying to find a suitably funny (and Christmassy) parody of Chappell Roan. DeLa does her best early on – creating uncomfortable visions of a “Red Reindeer Place” and trying to instigate a “Femininomenon” in the town of Bethlehem – before Jinkx tells her to give it up. But the pair eventually triumphed with their own, double-meta version of Roan's hit 'Hot to Go', this time singing about the difficulty of creating a Chappell parody before settling on the spelling of 'Hot Coco'.
While the show certainly has plenty of fun songs and hilarious gags — Jinkx's continued infatuation with and seduction of the Nutcracker had Brooklyn audiences in stitches — the core of the show comes into focus during the second act, when both Jinkx and and DeLa partially abandon the facade of the show to see the context in which they present it.
In an interview with Bulletin board In October, both Jinkx and DeLa expressed their desire to get to the core of our current system of political division and how these divisions have made the holidays and time of year even more difficult for everyone, especially the LGBTQ+ community. “At a difficult time of year, many people come together and see some beautiful visuals, costumes, sets and performances from our brilliant cast,” DeLa said at the time.
While I won't give away the show's clever plot, I can say that Jinkx & DeLa's breakdown of Act II landed right where they wanted it. As the pair use the structure of the show itself to process Donald Trump's re-election in November, they dig even deeper to get to the emotional core that the audience at the Kings Theater felt. When Jinx stated wistfully that – like many of us – she was “so tired of caring,” Della gave the necessary reality check: “I'm tired of people not caring.”
Gorgeous costume design and gifted performers helped elevate the 2024 Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show to new heights, that's for sure. But what has always made this crazy show work is what worked best for the 150th time on Thursday night. a pair of best friends and talented performers who know exactly how to balance the real with the delightfully absurd.
