Theatre in Review: The Queen of Versailles (St. James Theatre)

	Kristin Chenoweth and members of the company. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

It's almost a tradition: Every couple of decades, Stephen Schwartz writes a musical starring Kristin Chenoweth as a morally compromised heroine. Okay, it's happened exactly twice, but the last time was Wicked, and you know how that turned out. But if Wicked's Galinda is a featherbrain wised up by heartbreak, Jackie Siegel, the real-life heroine of The Queen of Versailles, is dedicated to mindlessly dancing through life. This is an odd one, a big, splashy effort, slickly professional in nearly every aspect, that has no idea what to make of its heroine. It's a star vehicle with a giant question mark at its center, and its nonjudgmental gaze ultimately leaves one feeling surprisingly neutral.

Jackie Siegel, of course, is the trophy wife (now widow) of David Siegel, the timeshare king, whose many properties include the Westgate Hotel in Las Vegas. Lauren Greenfield's 2012 documentary of the same name tracked Jackie's attempts at building the largest house in America, modeled, sort of, on Louis XIV's original, with such added amenities as a bowling alley and roller rink. With several scenes and numbers set in the Sun King's court, the musical is a tale of two cities, Paris and Orlando, and of lives bursting with excess, yet it is strangely lacking in revolutionary fervor, mordant commentary, or even a sense of humor.

The reunion of the composer and star is presented with a wink and a quote from Wicked. (In America, Jackie notes, "You don't have to be born great. Or have greatness thrust upon you." It gets one of the evening's bigger laughs.) Lindsey Ferrentino's book employs the convention of a documentary in progress to narrate Jackie's rise from humble beginnings in Endwell, New York, an IBM company town. Following a brief stint as a software engineer, she heads for New York City, where, following a breast lift, she lands a banker who, alas, relocates her to the Everglades and abuses her. Fleeing, she wins a Mrs. America contest -- yes, there is such a thing -- using her paltry winnings to start over as a single mother in Orlando. There she meets Siegel, who offers her the moon and stars, then proceeds to make good on his promissory note. Swept off her feet, Jackie marvels, "Only in America can you become a wife, a billionaire, and a Jew all in one day!"

But who is Jackie? What are we to make of her and her unappeasable appetite for luxury? The sources of it remain obscure, given her loving upbringing and middle-class origins. (We see her as a teen, avidly watching episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but not everything can be Robin Leach's fault.) The script makes half-hearted stabs at spoofing her. Passing us a hot tip, she says, "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!" Assembling her tacky-looking loved ones for a photo, she says, "Now. It may surprise you...but we are not old money." In her first number, "Because We Can," she sings that in the family's current residence, "Although it's sweet/It's only like twenty-six thousand square feet/So we're just bursting at the seams."

But we are clearly meant to sympathize with Jackie, too, even as the script notes that she ignores the pain of others, including her Filipino nanny, Sofia, who aches for her own children, whom she hasn't seen in years. Jackie is equally blind to the behavior of her daughter, Victoria, who racks up school suspensions and pops Xanax pills like Twizzlers. Later, when the subprime crisis strikes and David purges his workforce, the news of shattered lives is presented largely in passing. When bankruptcy looms, Jackie hits the reality show circuit, eagerly participating in various unseemly spectacles, hawking Brazilian coffee, and telling an embarrassed David, "I'm not just famous now, I'm a brand."

There are many ways one could have treated Jackie: as a hilarious gold-digger in the Lorelei Lee mold; a gutsy, life-affirming striver along the lines of Molly Brown; a monster of ambition like Madam Rose or Eva Peron; or a cautionary tale of contemporary Mammon worship. The Queen of Versailles tries all these approaches, and they end up canceling each other out. The show deploys a chorus of French aristocrats, bound for the guillotine, to comment that in America, "No mob will storm your palaces/No blade across the throat for you/Instead it seems your peasant class/Will all turn out to vote for you!" Fair enough, but after two-and-a-half hours of Jackie's single-minded pursuit of gold-plated mediocrity, it's too little, too late.

Chenoweth works like a demon, but instead of creating a character, she powers through her scenes and numbers, leaving one bemused by Jackie's sharklike focus on the next purchase. Schwartz has supplied a full complement of would-be showstoppers, including "Because We Can," an ode to unchecked materialism; the first-act closer "This is Not the Way," in which Jackie insists she will bounce back; "Show 'Em You're the Queen," when, fearing insolvency, she puts every available possession up for sale; and the finale, "This Time Next Year," which finds her alone in her gilded cage. But, at first hearing, none of them has the alluring pop quality of the composer's best work; he seems hamstrung by the show's ambivalent attitude. Ferrentino's book would have benefited from fewer tourist trips to the courts of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and more time spent on the Siegels' problematic family dynamics.

F. Murray Abraham gives his all as David, but, following his introductory number, "The Ballad of the Timeshare King," he has little to do but write checks and grumble about the market. (In one shocking moment, he turns on Jackie, threatening to replace her with a younger model, but the matter is quickly dropped.) Nina White is striking and eminently sympathetic as Victoria, who feels locked in perpetual competition with her shapely, surgically enhanced mother; she has some the score's best numbers, including the angry "Pretty Wins." Also proving their mettle are Tatum Grace Hopkins as Jonquil, Jackie's niece and the show's voice of reason; Melody Butiu as Sofia, pining in her private residence (formerly the children's playhouse) for the family she left behind; Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating as Jackie's uncritical parents; David Aron Damane as the family's sensible chauffeur, and Greg Hildreth as David's son and factotum, who offers a biting speech about life as a hanger-on to the filthy rich.

Dane Laffrey's production design is appropriately lavish, offering rooms in the real Versailles in addition to the Siegels' version, seen as both a work in progress and the gilded final product, which resembles the vision of that noted interior designer, Donald Trump. (Whatever Jackie Siegel's politics may be, she often seems alarmingly MAGA-adjacent.) Laffrey's video design relies, somewhat awkwardly, on a horizontal screen inserted into the action, although it is sometimes justified as a view from the documentary camera lens. Natasha Katz's lighting provides everything needed -- including saturated backwashes, the assured use of patterns, and audience ballyhoos -- without surrendering to vulgarity. The fashion designer, Christian Cowan, making his Broadway debut, effectively contrasts the frills and fabrics of the Sun King and his courtiers with David's untucked shirts, Victoria's tracksuits, and Jackie's ensembles, which include a sparkly leopard print dress and an evening gown that, Victoria notes, makes her mother look like a resident of Whoville. (Cookie Jordan's hair and wig designers are typically first-rate.) Sound designer Peter Hylenski supplies the intelligibility that has long been his hallmark.

But the arguably unfixable problem of The Queen of Versailles is a heroine who gives away her secrets in the first scene, leaving her insufficiently interesting to carry a two-act musical, especially one so unsure about what it wants to say. It ends with Jackie in the glittering entrance of her home, which, somebody quickly notes, remains unfinished. The show feels the same. --David Barbour