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Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes |
Stephen Schwartz has the distinction of having three shows running simultaneously on New York stages. In addition to the long-running Wicked, Schwartz’s songs are on display in The Queen of Versailles, a new musical based on the documentary film about socialite Jackie Siegel’s quest to build the largest private home in America, and The Baker’s Wife, based on Marcel Pagnol’s film, which closed during out-of-town try-outs before reaching Broadway in 1976. Both scores serve their respective shows well. But the former is a mixed bag of confused storytelling choices and Broadway excess while the latter is an intimate, delightful Off-Broadway charmer.There are many satisfying elements in Queen of Versailles, not the least of which is Kristin Chenoweth’s magnetic star performance as well as Michael Arden’s fluid, fast-paced direction and Dane Laffrey’s elaborate scenery and clever video design, combining elements of campy bad taste and European chic. The same can be said for Christian Cowan’s century-tripping costumes. But it’s unclear how Schwartz and book-writer Lindsey Ferrentino want us to feel about Chenoweth’s character, the vapid but tenacious Siegel. We learn plenty about her driven struggle to rise above the middle-class status of her hard-working parents (solid Broadway vets Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating). She works several jobs in high school, gets an engineering degree and survives an abusive first marriage. But her goals and means of achieving them are questionable at best.
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Kristin Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham
in The Queen of Versailles.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes |
After marrying the decades-older, fabulously wealthy Time Share King David Siegel (F. Murray Abraham, doing his best with a thankless role) and going on a honeymoon in France, Jackie decides to replicate the extravagant Palace at Versailles in her hometown of Orlando, Florida. Why? “Because We Can” she and the company sing in a number celebrating unrestrained consumption. Louis XIV (Pablo David Laucerica) and Marie Antoinette (Cassondra James)—both exhibit lovely voices, BTW—pop up in parallel-time scenes, meant to demonstrate what? That Jackie and David are just as bad as the French aristocracy who ended up guillotined by starving revolutionaries? (Jackie buys an actual guillotine without irony.) But then are we also supposed to admire Jackie’s pluck and determination while simultaneously disdaining her boundless avarice and materialism?
