NEW YORK — Nobody might probably be working tougher proper now on Broadway than Kristin Chenoweth, who’s bearing the load of a McMansion musical on her diminutive body and making it look like she’s hoisting nothing heavier than a number of overstuffed Hermes, Prada and Chanel buying baggage.
A trouper’s trouper, Chenoweth has reunited together with her “Depraved” 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 couple of household constructing one of many largest personal properties in America in a method that blends Louis XIV with Las Vegas.
When the Nice Recession of 2008 crashes the occasion, the Florida couple who’re by no means glad regardless of having all the pieces 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 together 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 many years older than her however as wealthy as Croesus, having proudly reworked himself into the “Timeshare King.”
With David funding her each whim, Jackie discovers the thrill of consumerism as her household expands alongside together with her credit score line. David adopts her first-born, Victoria (Nina White), a sulky adolescent who doesn’t recognize her mom’s lavish methods. And the couple proceed to have six extra kids 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 guide, 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 youngsters 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 approach.
Jackie didn’t got down to construct such a ludicrously gigantic residence. As she explains within the quantity “As a result of We Can,” “We simply need the house of our goals/And the home we’re in now,/Though it’s candy,/It’s solely like 26,000 sq. ft,/So we’re simply bursting on 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 side of the story. To drive residence the political level, the musical begins on the court docket 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 an alternative of claiming “Allow them to eat cake” she has her driver convey 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 girl 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 normal 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 for the reason that 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 had been left to fend for themselves — casualties of questionable mortgage practices and the “extra, extra, extra” 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 time at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, nevertheless it’s nonetheless an unwieldy operation regardless of the impeccable showmanship of Michael Arden’s path. 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 somewhat than those that undertake its perverted values.
However not content material to be a satiric case research in how the Siegel household story connects “Life of the Wealthy and Well-known” and “Dynasty” to the self-love and cruelty of Donald Trump’s America, the present aspires to the extent of tragedy. Attaining nice emotional depth, nevertheless, isn’t simple 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 “Depraved” 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 E book of Random,” by which susceptible Victoria provides vent to her struggling, and “Little Homes,” by which the modest way of life of Jackie’s dad and mom (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 Lifeless Lizard,” is a couple of reptile that starved to dying 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 Goals,” Jackie proclaims her “Champagne needs” 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 last quantity, “This Time Subsequent 12 months,” requires her to land the airplane after the present’s navigation system has basically gone clean.
“The Queen of Versailles” is designed to convey out all of Chenoweth’s Broadway shine. She by no means seems to be lower than completely photoshopped, however the manufacturing finally overtaxes her strengths. New musicals are inconceivable goals, and it is 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.
