By Matthew Wexler
“Let’s just skip this part, I — I don’t dwell on the negative,” says Kristin Chenoweth as MAGA millionaire Jackie Siegel on escaping the abusive marriage that pulled her from her New York City modeling career to the Florida swampland, where she eventually meets her second husband and begins building the largest home in America. If only I could do the same with The Queen of Versailles, the Broadway house of cards that opened tonight at the St. James Theatre.
Chenoweth reunites with Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz to bring the documentary film and “the life stories of Jackie and David Siegel” to the stage, with book writer Lindsey Ferrentino relying heavily on the 2012 film documentary of the same name.
When the 2008 financial crisis hits, David’s timeshare business, Westgate Resorts, grinds to a halt. So does the home’s construction, which was inspired by a trip to France. (Or is it the top floor of the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas?) Poor Jackie has to cook dinner and raise her eight kids—only two of them appear in the musical, and that’s two too many. Though charismatic, it’s hard to tell if Chenoweth’s desperate attempt at likability is character- or actress-based.
The documentary device frames the baffling storytelling, which charts the family’s rise and fall, with cubic zirconia gems like David’s (F. Murray Abraham) meddling in the 2000 presidential election, the nanny moving into the children’s abandoned playhouse, and animal cruelty depicted by a dead pet lizard.
Director Michael Arden, tasked to make sense of the musical’s disparate tone, fails to find the comedy or gravitas, leaving the audience as puzzled as the ensemble, who appear throughout as apparitional figures from 17th-century France. Schwartz (also represented downtown in a rare revival of The Baker’s Wife) has produced a score without a single hook, grasping at country-tinged melodies to play into Chenoweth’s love of the genre despite the real Jackie’s upstate New York origin story.
Scenic designer Dane Laffrey’s requisite construction site eventually delivers the garish monstrosity it promises. However, we never see the “secret passageway” Jackie planned to connect her room with her disenchanted daughter, Victoria (Nina White), so they can “get dressed up together.”
Probably for the best, though that secret passageway would serve the audience better if it led out of the theatre.
It wants better content.
Fast facts: ‘The Queen of Versailles’
Even Kristin Chenoweth’s desperate charm can’t salvage this cringy musical about building America’s largest home—a Broadway construction site that never finds its foundation.
- St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street, New York City
- Two hours and 40 minutes with a 20-minute intermission
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