{"id":35869,"date":"2025-11-11T11:12:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T11:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35869\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:12:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T11:12:29","slug":"kristin-chenoweth-in-the-queen-of-versailles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35869\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Broadway review by Adam Feldman\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ver-sigh. The biggest new musical of the fall arrives on a wave of high hopes, thanks to its promising main assets: music and lyrics by the veteran hitmaker Stephen Schwartz, in his first original Broadway score since Wicked<\/a>; a starring role for Kristin Chenoweth<\/a>, one of musical theater\u2019s great leading ladies, as the Florida socialite Jackie Siegel, a walking symbol of American excess; the creative talents of director Michael Arden and set designer Dane Laffrey, who have been on quite a roll<\/a>; and, in Lauren Greenfield\u2019s 2012 documentary about the Siegel family, a source with rich potential for adaptation. Like the 90,000\u2013square-foot,\u00a0$100-million palace that the Siegels are determined to build for themselves in Orlando, The Queen of Versailles is nothing if not ambitious. But like that same palace, it also feels misguided and very much still under construction.<\/p>\n

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The Queen of Versailles | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

The underlying problem is that QOV doesn\u2019t have a clear POV. Greenfield\u2019s film is always alert to the grotesque disconnect between the Siegels\u2019 lives of wasteful extravagance and the financial struggles of the employees in their orbit, including the nannies who care for their eight children. It is also a cautionary tale: Midway through the movie, the financial crisis of 2008 pulls the ornate rug out from under the Siegels\u2019 empire and plunges Jackie\u2019s future into uncertainty. What happens to a trophy wife when the shelf collapses? Can she live in the lack of luxury?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this riches-to-rags context, the bubbly and bosomy Jackie came off fairly well: clueless and spoiled, but also loving to her kids and personally generous to friends. But a lot has changed in the 13 years since the movie was released. The Siegel fortune rebounded, construction on the house resumed, the Siegels became public advocates for Donald Trump and Jackie\u2014now less charming, more preening and self-aware\u2014starred in a reality-TV show, The Queen of Versailles Reigns Again, that lasted one season. It hasn\u2019t all been rosy for the Siegels; the family suffered a tragic loss in 2015. But because their downfall felt like comeuppance, their comeback has been hard to root for.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Queen of Versailles | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

In adapting this story into a musical, Schwartz and book writer Lindsey Ferrentino have expanded backward and forward from the period covered in the film. A good deal of the first half is devoted to Jackie\u2019s rise, from her teenage years as Jackie Mallery in upstate New York (where she earned a degree in engineering) through her abusive first marriage, her 1993 victory in a Florida beauty pageant and her ascension to the ranks of the ultrarich. The downturn of 2008 hits just before intermission, but that can\u2019t keep Jackie down. \u201cThings are looking hopeless, but we all know it\u2019s a fact,\u201d she sings. \u201cIn America, you can have a second act.\u201d It\u2019s an Act One finale in the spunky tradition of \u201cDon\u2019t Rain on My Parade,\u201d and that\u2019s indicative of the show\u2019s main mistake: It overestimates the audience\u2019s investment in her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s so amazing about America!\u201d\u00a0Jackie says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be born great. Or have greatness thrust upon you. But you do gotta get out there and thrust yourself upon greatness. And just keep on thrustin\u2019!\u201d The greatness she thrusts herself upon\u2014in keeping with this lap-dance theory of success\u2014is David Siegel, the so-called \u201cTime-Share King,\u201d a rapacious billionaire thirty years her senior who treats her like a pet. David is played by F. Murray Abraham, and if you are wondering what F. Murray Abraham is doing in a Broadway musical, the answer is: not much. (The adaptation\u2019s focus on Jackie consigns David to a peripheral role.)<\/p>\n

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The Queen of Versailles | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

The outlandishly tacky Jackie\u2014who clutches an adorable dog and favors pink miniskirts, sometimes with matching fur\u2014is the type of real-life person who tends to get called a character. Chenoweth brings her considerable powers to bear in portraying her: charisma, energy, comic timing, a dazzling voice of many colors. \u201cOur main character does what America teaches: work harder, want bigger, never stop,\u201d notes a foreword to the script, and most of The Queen of Versailles envisions Jackie as a variation on the classic Broadway striver: a spunky go-getter looking to satisfy her \u201cchampagne wishes and caviar dreams\u201d and live larger than her scrappy-but-happy parents (an underused Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating). But we know where the story is going. Despite Chenoweth\u2019s immense appeal\u2014or perhaps, in part, because of it\u2014it\u2019s unclear if and why we are meant to care about a MAGA billionaire who is temporarily reduced to a lifestyle that most people would be thrilled to enjoy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, The Queen of Versailles periodically pulls back to suggest a larger context. We meet the family\u2019s Filipina nanny Sofia (Melody Butiu), who hasn\u2019t seen her own children in years, and David\u2019s business associate Gary (Greg Hildreth)\u2014who is also, less consequentially, David\u2019s neglected son from a previous marriage. The pernicious effects of shallowness are felt by the family\u2019s eldest daughter, Victoria (the excellent Nina White), who has body-image issues; the corrupting power of wealth is reflected in the arc of Jackie\u2019s niece, Jonquil (Tatum Grace Hopkins), who comes to live with them. Most pointedly: A recurring framing device compares the Siegels to the bewigged and brocaded aristocracy of prerevolutionary France, whose decadence is destined for the guillotine. Even as it teases bigger questions of wealth inequality, however, the musical spends most of its time answering a question no one wanted to ask: What if Elle Woods were kind of a nightmare?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Queen of Versailles | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

The Queen of Versailles wants to have its cake and let them eat it, too. Not until the very end does the musical sharpen its various elements into a point, and even then the focus is on Jackie\u2019s personal feelings, not the system she embodies. The final solo, which Chenoweth nails, gives Jackie more soul than the rest of the show has suggested, but it is undeniably well crafted, as is the rest of the score. In his lyrics, Schwartz has particular fun with rhymes for proper names: \u201cGeorge W.\u2019s President now \/ Thanks to David Siegel,\u201d sings Gary. \u201cI\u2019d share the plot, but it might not \/ Have been exactly legal,\u201d adds his father. (Elsewhere, \u201dJackie Mallery\u201d is paired with \u201cminimum wage salary\u201d and \u201cSusquehanna\u201d with \u201cAmericana.\u201d) Compositionally,\u00a0Schwartz plays with genres, with help from orchestrator John Clancy: The French court is baroque, of course; Victoria\u2019s standout first-act lament, \u201cPretty Wins,\u201d has a contemporary musical-theater sound, while David\u2019s \u201cTrust Me\u201d sits in a more old-fashioned Great American Songbook mode. Jackie\u2019s songs make good use of Chenoweth\u2019s range: She uses her punchy, twangy lower register for Jackie\u2019s regular-gal numbers and leaps into her lovely upper soprano when Jackie is feeling regal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like the rest of the show, however, the score doesn\u2019t quite cohere; it feels like less than the sum of its parts. Arden\u2019s direction provides good small moments but can\u2019t provide an overall attitude that the material lacks, and the production\u2019s look is inconsistent: Christian Cowan\u2019s costumes are great fun, but Laffrey\u2019s TV-set design relies too heavily on a large mobile screen, and the final marble staircase looks a mess at the bottom. The Yiddish word for The Queen of Versailles is ongepotchket: tacky and busy, with components that might be fine alone but don\u2019t come together. If you want to see it, you should probably see it soon: Like all those unlucky French courtiers, this show seems headed for the chopping block.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Queen of Versailles. St. James Theatre (Broadway<\/a>). Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Book by Lindsey Ferrentino. Directed by Michael Arden. With Kristin Chenoweth, F. Murray Abraham, Nina White, Tatum Grace Hopkins, Greg Hildreth, Melody Butiu, Stephen DeRosa, Isabel Keating. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. One intermission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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