By Kevin Ferrisi –
Deck the halls with Jinkx and DeLa! BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon bring their act to Connecticut for the first time. The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show came to the College Street Music Hall in New Haven for a night of festive holiday fun filled with campy musical parodies the New York Times says is “sure to lift your spirits and make you howl with laughter.” Following their holiday film, The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special, in 2020, and five fiercely successful and critically acclaimed previous tours, the dynamic RuPaul’s Drag Race duo return with more high-energy holiday fun and a side-splitting soundtrack sprinkled in sugar and spice, with no shortage of camp.
The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show kicked off six years ago and this holiday season, for the first time, stopped here in state. This year, the comedic duo surrender another year of their annual holiday favorites along with brand new songs serving up a fabulous spectacle oozing with keen-witted comedy and dazzling costume changes. The show, presented by BenDeLaCreme Presents and co-written by DeLa and Jinkx, highlights what they do best. Although both have shaped an impressive legacy in their solo careers, there’s something truly magical that ignites when these two join together.
General VIP ticket holders were granted access to the venue before the event for an exclusive Q&A with the Rupaul’s Drag Race alums. Then for advanced VIP ticket holders, the Q&A was followed by a meet-and-greet accompanied with a photo op with the queens. Later moving to Seattle, during the Q&A DeLa shared that she was born right here in state and raised in Litchfield, where she secretly started doing drag in the privacy of the home she grew up in. BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx also explained how they met while attending college in Seattle, Washington after a teacher suggested the two meet based on their similar artistic interests and talent.
After hosting an annual one-night holiday show on Christmas Eve for nearly a decade, BenDeLaCreme decided to take her solo concept on the road to spread the holiday cheer across the nation. With DeLa’s production team heading the project, DeLa reached out to Jinkx and invited her to co-write and co-host the show. Jinkx and DeLa were recently featured on CTV’s television news show, The Social, where DeLa described their holiday show. She says, “It’s as you might imagine, campy, fun, we do a lot of comedy, a lot of live singing, and original music parodies songs.” DeLa explained how they wanted to create a safe space for queer people at their shows and really emphasized the importance of chosen family.
Their holiday production was extremely well thought out, highlighting brilliant writing, delivering a Christmas show inside of a Christmas show. The presentation poked fun at having to write and produce, yet again, another holiday show and takes you on a journey exploring ideas that are creative and unusual and not limited or controlled by rules or tradition. The show was full of parodies of classic popular hit tracks rewritten with new hysterical Christmas lyrics. During an interview, Monsoon told Pride Today, “In the last few years, we’ve been putting these characters in the craziest situations we can think of. This year, we’re going more of a supernatural direction. It’s like White Christmas meets Poltergeist meets Looney Tunes.” You could almost describe it as a Christmas Twilight Zone where both icons were trapped inside the holiday production and looking for a way out.
Cleverly written, the night left the audience in continual riotous laughter with numbers such as ‘Krampus Daddy’ a play on the season’s favorite, ‘Santa Baby’ rewriting the lyrics from “hurry down the chimney tonight” to “hurry and get in me tonight” or the holiday classic ‘Little Drummer Boy’ remixed to the tune of Kylie Minogue’s chart-topper, ‘Padam Padam’. The endless brilliant list of parodies entertained drag fans during the two hour show.
Jinkx Monsoon is a performer, actor, and musical artist, recently making her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival of Chicago, as well as the season 5 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She later returned to All Stars 7, the first All Winners season. At the end of the season, Jinkx became the first two-time winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race after winning the season, taking the title of Queen of All Queens.
BenDeLaCreme, often referred to as DeLa, is well known for being a contestant on season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. DeLa finished in the top 5 and was voted Miss Congeniality by fans. DeLa also competed on season 3 of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, becoming the only queen in the show’s herstory to win five challenges in a single season. She controversially chose to eliminate herself in place of one of her competitors during the sixth episode.
The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show is co-written and co-created by BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon, directed by BenDeLaCreme and produced by BenDeLaCreme Presents, a company comprised of producers BenDeLaCreme, Kevin Heard and Gus Lanza. The entire package is wickedly funny, with numerous brilliant one liners and a camaraderie which plays off each other perfectly. The joint effort between the two friends is apparent and with this double header of a show, both legends get equal billing. The latest installment of their holiday show is surely deemed another winner.
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