The Queen of Versailles

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Sometimes it’s fun to root for the villain, if everyone agrees that is what’s happening. Much like last year’s morally muddled Tammy Faye, the new musical The Queen of Versailles is ambivalent about whether to scornfully or admiringly crown its own extravagantly vulgar protagonist, Jackie Siegel (Kristin Chenoweth), as her highness of lowness. Based partly on a 2012 documentary with the same name, The Queen of Versailles temporally stretches its stage narrative beyond the footage, both forward and way, way backward, in a search for depth, which the monomaniacally acquisitive Jackie never possesses in her delusional quest to use her husband David’s obscene wealth to build a grander Versailles in central Florida.

With inane panache, the show’s and Jackie’s strained efforts find shared voice through a Greek chorus by way of pre-revolutionary France. A supercilious mix of powdery faces under towering bouffants, the mere sight of these French monarchs and their patrician lackeys is enough to adequately mock Jackie’s pathetic pretensions. But composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, Wicked) can’t leave well enough alone, letting a bunch of snuff addicts also proffer faulty historical analysis. The most glaring faux pas comes in the number “Crash,” when Louis XIV and his court ascribe the root cause of the 2008 financial meltdown to “some altruistic plan” to “let peasants own their homes,” as if credit default swaps ever had a principled purpose.

Reunited with Chenoweth for the first time since Wicked, Schwartz once again benefits tremendously from a genuine member of Broadway royalty who, roughly two decades ago, as the original Glinda, turned a bunch of prosaic songs into popular ones (critic takes ostentatious bow). While the score for The Queen of Versailles will not survive in our collective memory (please, no!), Chenoweth, as always, gives it her considerable best, particularly when showing off her coloratura soprano to Marie Antoinette (Cassondra James). That would be worth a severely reduced price of admission, if not for the frustrating inconsistencies of Schwartz’s lyrics and Lindsey Ferrentino’s book, which eventually turn unconscionable.

As the smaller font in the program notes, Schwartz and Ferrentino are serving multiple source-material masters: the 2012 documentary and the assuredly soft-filtered “life stories of Jackie and David Siegel.” Given evidence of the perpetually vexed David’s non-fictional taciturnity, as well as his death earlier this year, it’s probable that the latter partnership was an unbalanced telling. Neither Schwartz nor Ferrentino do much to close the gap, largely leaving F. Murray Abraham as David with almost nothing to play other than old and rich, while Chenoweth turns Jackie into the one percent’s version of Norma Rae. Admittedly, however, Schwartz, director Michael Arden, and co-choreographers Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant do make the effort to degrade Abraham’s long and illustrious career through a twangy, lighthearted number called “The Ballad of the Timeshare King,” which, in a sense, is a fitting tribute to the predatory financial practices that made their musical possible.

After the markets bite back, and all of those risky timeshare mortgages go belly up, Jackie becomes determined to safeguard her palatial American Dream in the face of David’s changing fortune. Needless to say, it’s hard to sympathize, especially as Jackie continues to employ and abuse a Filipino nanny (Melody Butiu) who lives in a backyard children’s playhouse. Jackie’s brood includes six biological offspring with David, eldest daughter Victoria (Nina White) from Jackie’s previous marriage, and an adopted, formerly poor niece Jonquil (Tatum Grace Hopkins).

Like the manic mobster Henry Hill from the movie Goodfellas, Jackie dreads becoming a schnook who works a 9-to-5 job for a 9-to-5 life. Flashbacks to her younger, far-from-destitute days in the modest home of her sitcomish parents (Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating) track how Jackie escaped that fate through a pair of physical enhancements and a beauty pageant. Still able to dress in a seemingly endless procession of skintight eyesores (eclectic costume design by Christian Cowan) despite David’s economic downturn, Jackie’s self-indulgent struggle is to somehow reclimb the ladder of truly bonkers conspicuous consumption.

It’s neither a credible hero’s journey nor a compelling antihero’s one; it’s simply soulless, requiring The Queen of Versailles to steal a soul for its storytelling stakes. That theft comes from Victoria whose diary Jackie and David had posthumously published (so, not just their life stories). A conscience trapped on scenic designer Dane Laffrey’s set of demented mirrored-and-marbled aspirations, Victoria gets Schwartz’s only striking song, “Pretty Wins,” a painful teenaged testament to the persistent victories of comely vacuity that White heartbreakingly performs. But, as welcome as Victoria’s introspective presence might be, The Queen of Versailles doesn’t establish a right to it.

Nearing its conclusion, the show pompously descends into sanctimony, with a depiction of the Reign of Terror (not sure what Louis XIV is doing there) serving as a warning for American aristocrats to change their selfish ways. But it’s unclear what their comeuppance might be in these modern times: it’s unlikely our moneyed elite will be marched to the guillotine, though perhaps its gaudier notables could also become the subjects of their own Broadway musicals. While that’s obviously not a comparable horror, judging by The Queen of Versailles, it’s not a desirable outcome either.

The Queen of Versailles (through December 21, 2025)

St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 888-985-9421 or visit http://www.queenofversaillesmusical.com

Running time: two hours and 40 minutes including one intermission