NEW YORK (AP) — For much of the new Broadway show, “The Queen of Versailles,” the set is covered in tarps and slipcovers. That’s fitting for a musical that ultimately seems still under construction.
It’s based on a 2012 documentary film about the quixotic attempt to build the largest private home in America and despite reuniting star Kristin Chenoweth with her “Wicked” songwriter Stephen Schwartz, there’s an unfinished feel, like some spackling and sanding is desperately needed.
“The Queen of Versailles,” which opened Sunday night at the St. James Theatre, doesn’t really know why socialite Jacqueline “Jackie” Siegel is so dogged in completing an American replica of Versailles in Orlando, Florida, despite recession and personal tragedy.
Lindsey Ferrentino’s story waffles between ridicule and championing Siegel’s pie-in-the-sky vision, failing at biting satire and ultimately losing a chance to say something about wealth inequality as America flirts with economic disaster again. “I don’t know if they’re laughing with us or at us,” says a niece, summing up the whole audience experience.
It’s a musical very much in the shadow of the second administration of Donald Trump, with references to the White House, East Wing and McDonald’s. It’s actually set in a cavernous grand ballroom under construction, which only in the final minutes revealed to be an ornate marble and gold trim affair. When Siegel is asked why she’s doing all this, her very Trumpian answer is: “Because I can.”
After a prologue in 1661 France with Louis XIV and courtiers tittering, Act 1 is Jackie Siegel’s rags-to-riches-rise, how she vowed to get out of her blue-collar town to achieve “Caviar Dreams,” a clunky nod to the glitzy TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”
The would-be engineer-turned-beauty pageant contestant ends up as a single mom leaving an abusive relationship and then becomes wife to the much older David Siegel, who earned billions selling timeshares, played with reptilian charm by F. Murray Abraham. “Only in America can you become a wife, a billionaire and a Jew all in one day,” she says.
After a visit to Versailles, the couple decide to build their own version. Why? Not clear. To have everyone she loves under one 90,000 square foot roof? Or maybe as a bid at American royalty — “how they’ll remember my family and me.” It’s not a void she is filling from neglect since her loving parents love their small home, singing the charming “Little Houses.” Then comes the global recession of 2008.
“David opened up a door to this other world. Did you know our whole country is actually run by a bunch of billionaires most of us had never even heard of? It’s real crazy,” Jackie says, as close to political commentary as we ever get.
Act 2, which fills in after the end of the documentary, uses the first half’s runway to crash. It’s a riches to rags to riches again story but why there’s a song about a dead lizard is a head-scratcher. After a daughter, who longs to be normal, overdoses, Jackie vows: “I’ve got to change/I’m going to change” — and then simply doesn’t.
Members of the 18th century French aristocracy — who have been filtering in and out of the present all night, a little too much like “Hamilton” — soon face the guillotine in a tonal whiplash. The bodies — both reptile and human pile up in the second act — until Siegel ends up alone, holding a champagne flute and posing for social media on her ballroom’s glittering master staircase.
Tony Award-winner Michael Arden — appropriate for a musical about excess — throws everything on the stage: Golf carts, Elvis impersonators, George W. Bush in a projection, a small fluffy dog, as well as bills and confetti thrown into the audience, the action even taking over the theater boxes and aisles.
Schwartz’s songs veer from a twangy “The Ballad of the Timeshare King” to the brassy “Show ‘Em You’re the Queen” and the naughty “Keep On Thrustin,’” but perhaps the best song is not given to Chenoweth — it’s “Pretty Wins,” sung by a daughter, a strong Nina White. Few tunes are very memorable.
Chenoweth, who was born to be in a spangly dress and center stage on Broadway, is perfect for the role, an always-welcome jolt of in-on-it theatricality, but is let down by dialogue that’s not as funny as it could be and with a character too unfocused.
Despite an out-of-town tryout in Boston, “The Queen of Versailles” still needs the stage filled with construction workers hammering in yellow vests. It’s not quite completed.
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