Drag queen to play Judy Garland on stage :-(

[FuriousAndFrustrated]

https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/jinx-monsoon-to-play-judy-garland-in-over-the-rainbow-london-revival_1704383/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinkx_Monsoon

So we can't have a woman playing a transwoman, but it's ok to have a drag queen playing Judy Garland?

Ridiculous casting.

I was trying to get my head around this too

He's going to identify as 4 foot 11 of course - and lo, it shall be so.

It doesn't make any more or less sense.

In my experience it generally doesn't work. It's just, as a pp said, a distraction. But it's not an ethical issue.

I know the venue (I live nearby) and the play but remain of the view it’s not a big deal. It’s one version /interpretation of a play. There are thousands of versions of thousands of plays. I have seen plays where women play male roles. I have seen plays where ethnic minorities play white roles. It happens across all arts - Matthew Bourne’s all male Swan Lake, for example, was fantastic. Adrian Lester playing Henry V is one of the best plays I have ever seen. I simply don’t care when they do that, so don’t care about this - I think re-working plays/dance etc and different interpretations are just art. As I say, if this were a proper west end production I MIGHT care more, but in the grand scheme of things, this is a non issue.

I do care about men claiming to actually be women. I care about the impact on prisons, sport, changing rooms, domestic abuse services, reporting sex discrimination, crime stats etc. This play just isn’t the problem to me for the reasons I set out above. I appreciate others feel differently and that’s fine.

Women are underserved when it comes to acting roles both in number and quality. Actresses over 35 are especially short of material. Men have a plethora of good parts for all ages.
It's unfair to take good women's parts and give them to men, especially when the men claim to be women.

I also disagree with some of the rest of your post (about the venue etc) but wanted to stick to my main point.

I agree with what GC5 says, working on the presumption that without Jinkx’s involvement the production probably wouldn’t be happening at all, rather than him taking a highly-prized, competitively fought-for female role. If that’s wrong then I’d happily stand corrected.

I forgot as well that fwiw Jinkx was known for a viral Judy Garland bit from Drag Race already, so people know what he can do and there is probably more of a built-in audience for this than there would be.

How does that make it better?

Man who makes living from womanface gets womanface part in musical about real woman ahead of dozens of qualified actresses.

Judy Garland was a real person who was famously exploited as a child and as a woman.

As for bringing in an audience, the woman who is the subject of the play, Judy Garland, is still better known and loved than this drag artist, I venture to suggest. There must be female ex-winners of TV singing competitions, or soap actresses with name recognition.

Anyway. I am taking a break from Mumsnet for a bit, so enjoy your weekend, all.

Exactly.
Men have been stealing women's roles in the arts since Victorian times when Mr Simmons decided to take the role of Mother Goose, changing her from a kind, nurturing grandmother figure who teaches children nursery rhymes and how to read into a witch (how original). Joseph Grimaldi then grabbed the idea and ran with it as the public were getting bored with clowns.

Mother Goose should be a positive depiction of older women and instead she's been turned into a nasty, nagging, hideous caricature to appeal to misogynistic men.