NEW YORK — Nobody might probably be working more durable proper now on Broadway than Kristin Chenoweth, who’s bearing the load of a McMansion musical on her diminutive body and making it appear to be she’s hoisting nothing heavier than a couple of overstuffed Hermes, Prada and Chanel procuring baggage.
A trouper’s trouper, Chenoweth has reunited along with her “Wicked” compatriot Stephen Schwartz, who has written the rating for “The Queen of Versailles.” The present, which had its Broadway opening on the St. James Theatre on Sunday, is an adaptation of Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary a few household constructing one of many largest personal properties in America in a mode that blends Louis XIV with Las Vegas.
When the Nice Recession of 2008 crashes the celebration, the Florida couple who’re by no means glad regardless of having every thing discover themselves scrounging to make the mortgage funds for this unfinished (and probably unfinishable) Orlando colossus. Not even the banks know what to do with this gargantuan white elephant.
The primary half of the musical traces Jackie’s rise from a hardworking upstate New York hick to a Florida magnificence pageant winner who escaped an abusive relationship along with her child daughter. Her dream of nabbing a rich husband comes true after she meets David Siegel (F. Murray Abraham, in vivid vulgarian resort mogul mode). He’s a long time older than her however as wealthy as Croesus, having proudly remodeled himself into the “Timeshare King.”
With David funding her each whim, Jackie discovers the fun of consumerism as her household expands alongside along with her credit score line. David adopts her first-born, Victoria (Nina White), a sulky adolescent who doesn’t admire her mom’s lavish methods. And the couple proceed to have six extra youngsters collectively earlier than adopting Jackie’s niece, Jonquil (Tatum Grace Hopkins), a Dickensian waif who reveals up with all her belongings stuffed into plastic baggage.
The musical’s e-book, written by Lindsey Ferrentino (whose performs included the uncooked veteran restoration story “Ugly Lies the Bone”) offers solely with Victoria and Jonquil, leaving the opposite children to our creativeness together with a lot of the pets that undergo the seesaw of lavish consideration and inconsiderate neglect that’s the Siegel household manner.
Jackie didn’t got down to construct such a ludicrously gigantic residence. As she explains within the quantity “Because We Can,” “We just want the home of our dreams/And the house we’re in now,/Although it’s sweet,/It’s only like 26,000 square feet,/So we’re just bursting at the seams.”
This model of “The Queen of Versailles,” making the visible most of settings by scenic and video designer Dane Laffrey, that may make Mar-a-Lago appear understated, embraces the sociological fable facet of the story. To drive residence the political level, the musical begins on the courtroom of Louis XIV and returns to France close to the tip of the present after the French Revolution has bloodied up the guillotine with the powdered heads of callous aristocrats.
Jackie sees herself as a modern-day Marie Antoinette, however as a substitute of claiming “Let them eat cake” she has her driver carry again sufficient McDonald’s to feed a whole movie crew. Chenoweth, who’s as gleaming as a vacation decoration on Liberace’s Christmas tree, arrives at a canny stability of quixotic generosity and parvenu carelessness in her portrayal of a lady she refuses to lampoon.
Kristin Chenoweth and the Firm of “The Queen of Versailles.”
(Julieta Cervantes)
The second half of the musical recaps what occurs when the tremendous wealthy face spoil — spoil not within the sense of going hungry however of getting to cease shopping for luxurious items in bulk. Along with his timeshare empire hanging within the stability, Abraham’s David transforms from Santa Claus to Ebenezer Scrooge, belligerently withdrawing into his residence workplace like a crushed basic plotting a counteroffensive and treating Jackie like a trophy spouse who has misplaced her golden sheen.
Ferrentino extends the timeline past the documentary to incorporate what occurred to the household within the years because the movie was launched and Jackie took to the highlight like a Actual Housewife given her personal spinoff. The federal bailout labored wonders for the haves, just like the Siegels, whereas the have-nots have been left to fend for themselves — casualties of questionable mortgage practices and the “more, more, more” mantra of America. However nobody escapes the brutal ethical accounting, not even Jackie, after she suffers a tragedy no quantity of retail remedy will ever make proper.
“The Queen of Versailles” has grown tighter since its tryout final summer season at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, but it surely’s nonetheless an unwieldy operation regardless of the impeccable showmanship of Michael Arden’s course. The issue isn’t the manufacturing however the musical’s shifting raison d’être.
The primary act hews to the documentary in a flatly simple trend. The making of the movie turns into the invitation to inform Jackie’s story within the mythic phrases she favors. The musical indulges her not with a smirk however with a understanding smile. It’s the tradition that’s skewered relatively than those that undertake its perverted values.
However not content material to be a satiric case examine in how the Siegel household story connects “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and “Dynasty” to the self-love and cruelty of Donald Trump’s America, the present aspires to the extent of tragedy. Reaching nice emotional depth, nonetheless, isn’t straightforward when carrying a cosmetic surgery masks of comedy.
Kristin Chenoweth as Jackie Siegel in “The Queen of Versailles.”
(Julieta Cervantes)
Schwartz has composed an American time capsule of Broadway pop, with as a lot selection as “Wicked” although with much less bombast and no actual standout blockbuster numbers. The rating strikes from the zingy send-up of “Mrs. Florida” and “The Ballad of the Timeshare King” within the first act to the extra maudlin “The Book of Random,” through which weak Victoria provides vent to her struggling, and “Little Houses,” through which the modest life-style of Jackie’s mother and father (performed by Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating) is extolled in more and more grandiose musical trend, within the second.
Unusually, one of many present’s most charming songs, “Pavane for a Dead Lizard,” is a few reptile that starved to demise due to Victoria’s negligence. The quantity, a duet for Victoria and Jonquil, doesn’t make importunate emotional calls for and is all of the extra poignant for its restraint. (White’s Victoria and Hopkins’ Jonquil come into their very own right here, letting down the defensive armor of their recalcitrant characters.)
Melody Butiu, who performs the Siegels’ Filipina nanny and indispensable factotum, has a readier place in our hearts for all that she has needed to sacrifice to assist her distant household. Her materials lack exists stoically within the shadow of the household’s monstrous extra.
In “Caviar Dreams,” Jackie proclaims her “Champagne wishes” of changing into “American royalty.” Chenoweth, whose comedian vibrancy breaches the fourth wall to make direct contact with the viewers, relishes the humor of Jackie with out poking enjoyable of her, even when singing an operatic duet with Marie Antoinette (Cassondra James). However the materials by no means permits Chenoweth to emotionally soar, and the fumbling remaining quantity, “This Time Next Year,” requires her to land the aircraft after the present’s navigation system has primarily gone clean.
“The Queen of Versailles” is designed to carry out all of Chenoweth’s Broadway shine. She by no means appears to be like lower than completely photoshopped, however the manufacturing in the end overtaxes her strengths. New musicals are not possible goals, and this can be a whopper of a present, daunting in scale and jaw-dropping in ambition. If solely Chenoweth’s dazzling star energy didn’t have to take action a lot of the heavy lifting.
