“The Queen of Versailles,” Stephen Schwartz’s latest musical, which stars Kristin Chenoweth as the real-life billionaire’s wife Jackie Siegel, comes far closer to Jackie’s favorite childhood TV show, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” than to the morality tale about the pursuit of the American Dream that it tries to be. The production is impressively designed and wonderfully acted; the show has a pleasant enough new score by a high-profile composer who’s on a roll (his 1976 musical “The Baker’s Wife” is opening later this week Off-Broadway, and “Wicked: For Good” is being released later this month.) But it doesn’t adequately answer for me Sondheim’s essential question: Why should this be a musical?
“The Queen of Versailles” is based on the 2012 documentary film of the same name, which chronicles the circuitous route that Jackie took from a modest home in Endwell, New York to Orlando, Florida, the third wife of David Siegel, who had made his fortune selling time share vacations. “Everyone wants to be rich. If they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich,” he explained the lure of the time share concept in the film (one of the lines that appears nearly verbatim in the musical.) On their honeymoon in France, the couple visited the French royal palace of Versailles. David decided to build a replica of it for her, in all its extravagance, aiming to create the largest private house in the United States. Much of the film, however, takes place after the Great Recession of 2008, which halted the construction and put an evident strain on their marriage.
The musical is framed as the documentary in the making, with Chenoweth as Jackie and F. Murray Abraham as David talking to the film crew about their life past and present in between scenes of the construction and other interactions. But the musical goes beyond the events of the movie. At the close of Act I, after the financial crash, when David has just halted the construction and thrown out the film crew, Jackie sings: “This is not the way our movie ends…” and the ensemble sings with her: “We know it’s a fact/In America you can/Have a second act.”
Her (and the show’s) second act is a decidedly mixed bag for the family (and for us.) It includes the fame she gains from the success of the movie, which she spins into a brand. But it also includes a tragedy.
To distinguish from a reality show, the musical also features King Louis XIV (Pablo David Laucerica) and the original Queen of Versailles, Marie Antoinette (Cassondra James), in scenes set in the 17th century. Marie of course is best known (besides being beheaded) for her (likely apocryphal) response to the call of the impoverished people of France for bread: “Let them eat cake.” But there is another saying about cake that came to mind: The show wants us to eat the cake and have it too.
We are encouraged both to root for Jackie, who is shown as resilient and enterprising (with both an engineering degree and a beauty pageant title), but also to mock her:
“Are you happy?” David asks her at their wedding.
“So happy. If my face isn’t showing it, it’s just the Botox”
She purchases a priceless painting of Marie Antoinette, and has her own face plastered on it.
We are asked to find some cultural significance in her excesses. But we wind up mostly entertained or taken aback by her eccentricities, which seem to fit Ripley’s Believe It or Not! or Guinness — or a Reality TV show — more than anything directly emblematic of America: As David says to her, “You can’t have one dog, you’ve got to have eleven [which she has a taxidermist stuff after they die] Can’t have one child, you’ve got to have eight. You can’t help it. That’s who you are.” And rather than our absorbing a lesson on the downside of American capitalism, we mostly ogle the visual splendor of the production that her lavishness encourages – Dane Laffrey’s monumental sets, Christian Cowan’s lush costumes, the elegant furnishings, a warehouse’s worth of Jackie’s ludicrous purchases, such as a full-sized guillotine and even a giant birthday cake “that someone can jump out of.”
Some of these possessions are displayed during a “Thrift Mart,” when Jackie tries to sell them, singing a sales pitch:
Your neighbors will be turning green
Because we live in a nation that admires ostentation
They’ll applaud your gumption for conspicuous consumption
Yes, it’s that unsubtle. The musical is threaded with such moments that are supposed to be pointed commentary on American materialism. There are also lines here and there about the people at the other end of the economy, most notably a remark that was also in the documentary by the nanny (Melody Butiu) that Jackie’s children say they love her like a mother, but she hasn’t seen her own back in the Philippines for twenty years. ( I imagine that most of the lines about the economically marginalized were contributed by librettist Lindsey Ferrentino, making her Broadway debut, who has an impressive track record as a serious playwright, with such works as Ugly Lies the Bone, a blunt, honest look at the challenges facing a severely injured veteran, and Amy and the Orphans, a story about, and starring, a woman with autism.) “The Queen of Versailles” nevertheless largely comes off as the Broadway equivalent of a Reality TV show. The societal insights are too brief, not deep and not new, and indeed the effort can feel too calculated, even disingenuous. (It doesn’t help that Jackie Siegel herself is an investor in the show.)
What the many producers and investors are banking on, I suspect, is the lure of a well-produced, star-led entertainment, under the direction of the always reliable Michael Arden (who won his latest Tony Award for his direction of “Maybe Happy Ending.”) Chenoweth is a pro at putting over a number.
Here she is singing “Caviar Dreams” a year ago at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center as Jackie the teenager, with Schwartz at the piano:
Here lies Jackie Mallery ,
Minimum wage salary ,
With a tiny life and great big dreams
She has no clue how to achieve.
But Chenoweth is not alone. Here is Cassondra James performing with her ‘The Royal We”
”
Here is standout Nina White as Victoria, Jackie’s oldest daughter, singing “Pretty Wins”
I know mom wishes i was prettier
I think her friends all sort of pity her
That she got stuck with me,
The lyrics are unremarkable, but her delivery is memorable.
Victoria and Jonquil (a niece whom Jackie adopted) are the only of Jackie’s eight children who are portrayed in “The Queen of Versailles.” I’m not sure that this is ironic, but it’s almost as if the show is conceding: She’s too much.
The Queen of Versailles
St. James Theater
Update: Closing January 4, 2026
Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes including an intermission
Tickets: $77 – $396
Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
Book by Lindsey Ferrentino, based on Lauren Greenfields documentary film
Directed by Michael Arden, Choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant
Scenic and video design by Dane Laffrey, costume design by Christian Cowan, lighting design by Natasha Katz, sound design by Peter Hylenski, hair & wig design by Cookie Jordan, orchestrations by John Clancy,
Cast: Kristin Chenoweth as Jackie Siegel, F. Murray Abraham as David Siegel, Melody Butiu as ‘Sofia’, Stephen DeRosa as John, Greg Hildreth as Gary, Tatum Grace Hopkins as Jonquil, Isabel Keating as Debbie and Nina White as Victoria, Yeman Brown, David Aron Damane, Drew Elhamalawy, Christopher Gurr, KJ Hippensteel, Cassondra James, Andrew Kober, Jesse Kovarsky, Pablo David Laucerica, Travis Murad Leland, Ryah Nixon, Shea Renne, Michael McCorry Rose, Grace Slear, Anne Fraser Thomas, Jake Bentley Young and Sherie Rene Scott as Standby Jackie
Photos by Julieta Cervantes
