The Queen of Versailles Review – Kristin Chenoweth Goes Big in the Impractical Broadway Musical | Broadway

toAs with the U.S. Capitol a century later, Versailles, that magnificent and stately monument to the French monarchy, was built on questionable foundations: swamps. Many in King Louis But he did it anyway: wetlands dried up, sand imported, and running water painstakingly engineered to support a grandiose ode to absolute power.

“The Queen of Versailles,” a new original Broadway musical starring Kristin Chenoweth, rests on similarly shaky foundations. The show’s raison d’être is to reunite Chenoweth, the diminutive diva who created Broadway’s iconic blonde (Glinda the Good Witch), with villainous composer Stephen Schwartz. For Chenoweth’s first major role on Broadway in a decade, the duo, along with author Lindsay Ferrentino, chose an odd comeback vehicle: a shopaholic billionaire’s wife, proud builders of the largest private residence in America, and an unrepentant believer in the spoils of American capitalism.

Certainly, the life of Jackie Siegel, a middle-class struggler who successfully married the owner of the largest privately owned timeshare company in America — who would be David Siegel (F. Murray Abraham), who is no less than Abraham’s voice fit for a musical — gives Chenoweth a lot to chew on. The actress, forever walking the line between sweet middle America and New York camp, shines as the unapologetically new money blonde with big hair, big (fake) breasts and a huge appetite for all things big (“If you can make it bigger, do it!” she shudders). As obnoxious as Jackie’s pointless and terribly vulgar wealth might read in 2025, it’s hard not to root for her, as Chenoweth relishes every dazzling hot pink outfit, sassy punchline and literal emphasis on her “keep pushing” mantra. Chenoweth’s flair, her distinctively operatic and striking soprano, and her decades-long grip on the mock-but-likable blonde tone, give what should easily be a ridiculous matter a gentle varnish of heroism.

She’s the star of this ornate production, which is a shame. Based in part on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary about the Siegels’ quest to build a scale model of Versailles in a Florida swamp, The Queen of Versailles, like McMega’s American palace she recreated, is opulent, impractical, pointless, and seemingly unfinished. At times, the bloated production—the show, directed by Michael Arden, is nearly three hours long with an intermission—evokes the follies of the French aristocracy of the past, as Louis It’s part multimedia spectacle of American trash—an elaborate collage of Father-era construction and live camera work (stunning scenic and video design by Dane Laffrey) that makes it one of the most infinitely layered stages I’ve ever seen. It’s part American camp, as Jackie recounts her self-mythologizing rise from waitress to IBM engineer to boob job to pageant queen to trophy wife, an ode to hijinks with some rambling observations (like, you know, spousal abuse) that the show, like the narrator, treats as unpleasant but necessary gristle to the winner.

It’s partly a family drama triangle, between Jackie, her daughter Victoria (Nina White) and her adopted cousin Jonquil (Tatum’s Grace Hopkins), a very poor outsider who quickly takes to the Siegel family’s very late materialism (credit to costume designer Christian Cowan: the 2008 references are painfully accurate.) and it’s, in part, a goofy commentary on the American cult of wealth, with an obvious reference to the reconstructed East Wing (ha!) A reminder, thanks to Marie Antoinette (Cassondra James), that we may have outdone the Sun King when it comes to It’s vulgar aristocracy.

That moment — like a brief, heartbreaking interlude of Filipina nanny Sofia (Melody Buteo, who makes the most with less) living in the old Victoria Theatre, or David Siegel jokingly wondering why he got a government bailout in 2009 when his bankrupt tenants don’t (the financial collapse is a relative turning point) — should go deeper. But they feel like self-conscious footnotes to Jackie’s astonishing tome on absurdity and illusion. In effect, this creep results in an absolute mess, held together by music that is at best forgettable, if it suits Chenoweth’s still-beautiful voice, and at worst unpleasantly muddled (the Timeshare King song), immature (the Dead Lizard song) or downright offensive (the tiny houses — you know, the lower-middle-class kind — that have, of course, “big hearts”).

Whatever good points Schwartz and co hoped to make, they are contained instead in Chenoweth’s powerful performance—hilarious, in a diva with Marie Antoinette, and altogether less interesting when the subject is Jackie’s prodigal persistence, even after devastating (and discordant) tragedy. The final number should be devastating, meant to convey Jackie’s feeling of incredible loneliness amidst the harsh marble and mirrors – again, that’s the set! – Not Rose’s role, as it merely conveys Chenoweth’s readiness for another starring role. Of course, it’s not the Queen of Versailles’ fault that she got her cake as food aid expired while the White House was being repainted in gold. But you can forgive us for not caring.