By Lucy Komisar
“Queen of Versailles” – Book by Lindsey Ferrentino — starts out feminist, about a working-class girl who struggles to get an education, makes a bad marriage choice and pulls out of it. Then she becomes so entrapped by the lure of riches and conspicuous consumption that she devotes her life and sacrifices her daughter to it. I’d want to see that straight play.
We see it, but the musical is engulfed in the tackiness of this heroine, or anti-heroine, clad in glittery tight sheaths and spike heels, to the point where anyone interested in the serious story forgets the politics and wants to change the channel. Even with Kristin Chenoweth’s fine belting / singing.
The defense of book writer Ferrentino and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who also did the music, may be that it is based on the true story of Jackie Siegel (Chenoweth) which was a 2004 documentary. So they couldn’t diverge. But I wish the underlying class /oligarch story had been stronger. Or not overtaken by the tackiness. It’s a problem not solved by director Michael Arden who has to balance an interesting political story with a tacky song and dance production.
Jackie Siegel is a pretty interesting person. A feminist manquée. When she was 17, working at fast food, she watched “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” She put herself through college to get an engineering degree. The boss called her “honey” and asked for coffee. She went to New York and, deciding it was how to get ahead, got a breast augmentation. (Chenoweth’s décolletage is excessive, but that is par for the theater these days.)
Jackie makes a bad marriage with a corporate self-promoter and ends up in Florida, isolated in a house near the Everglades. When looking for a way out, she wins a Mrs. Florida pageant, her husband smacks her hard. Tough, she has him arrested and gets two jobs to support her child, Victoria. Game Jackie.
She meets David (F. Murray Abraham) 30 years her senior who is founder/CEO of Westgate Resorts, the largest timeshare company in the world. Very rich. His father had been a grocer; they are both working class. But turns out the only values they have imbibed is money.
In an intro she says, “It may surprise you, but we are not old money…. You don’t have to be born great…” Is that a backhanded slap at the vulgarians they turn out to be?
They visit France for the first time, see Versailles, and she decides she will build a replica.
Yes, there are some super-rich who have done similar. Larry Ellison, co-founder and former CEO of Oracle, built a magnificent collection of buildings in Woodside, California, modeled after a 16th-century Japanese imperial estate. No musicals about him. Are the authors looking down on Jackie for not using her fabulous wealth with better taste? Too much glitter?
I loved the musical interludes with the 18th century French royals, especially the baritone of the Sun King (Pablo David Laucerica). They didn’t treat the peasants very well; we know where that leads.
Neither, of course, does Jackie. Sophia (Melody Butiu), the nanny of her seven children (we see only Victoria) has not seen her kids in the Philippines in years. One she saw at 8 is now 26. It’s unclear why she can’t go home.
Jackie has no sensitivity toward her own daughter. Victoria, 17 (Nina White, with a moving voice), who abuses various drugs and is shown on a tread mill at her mother’s behest to lose weight. “Another party to get thinner for…Another evening with the skinny blond pageant of girls pretending to be virgins.” And “pretty always wins…gets the job, gets the guys.”
There’s an interesting bit with Queen Antoinette and Jackie who appears as a peasant dreaming about being a queen. Is that how she sees herself now? Then there’s another connection. The French royals’ oratorio “Crash” about the peasants (it didn’t work out well for the royals) takes us to the 2008 U.S. crash. Turns out David has to sell Versailles to pay his debts.
Jackie reaches the nadir of tackiness by using TV to auction off her expensive tchotchkes. And to market products of companies she set up to sell Versailles coffee, back packs and hot sauce.
But then David arrives triumphant that, “The crash is over.”
That’s when Barak Obama and his elite collaborators bailed out the big banks and corporates.
JACKIE: What do you mean – no it’s not. We just saw foreclosure signs all over Endwell.
DAVID: Well, the government isn’t bailing out the folks in Endwell, they’re bailing out folks like us. The crash is over for the Siegels.
Obama and his oligarch buddies protected the multi-million dollar empires of David and his ilk but not the 7 million American homeowners who were foreclosed. David’s son (Greg Hildreth) who works for the company says, “Rules for common folk don’t apply.” Game the corporates. (Does it take a Broadway musical to point out to mainstream audiences that Obama was a fraud? Thank you Lindsey Ferrentino.)
This might have been a worthy production if the politics were somehow more integrated and pointed, Versailles vs. the 7 million. Because audiences may miss the subtleties. Jackie got Versailles back and the 7 million lost their homes. Never giving up opulence, she tells a TV audience that it has taken a decade to get the ballroom done. And they haven’t even started on the east wing (laughter). A pink Birkin bag sits unremarked on the staircase. So we are left with the tackiness.
The French royals sum up the unfortunate moral of the Jackie Siegel story.
“Seventeen ninety-three alas we fear
Will not be our fav’rite year
(the royals were guillotined)
Ah, but if you please
Before we must depart
Across the centuries
May we say this from the heart
Congratulations to your American aristocracy
Unlike us, you’ve found a neat solution
You’ve found the way to fix what you like to call
“democracy”
So you will never see a revolution
You’ve got your peasants thinking they’re tomorrow’s
Millionaires
And that your special privileges will someday soon be
Theirs
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!
So congratulations one-percent on being oh, so clever
And making sure that this time
The kingdom goes on forever.”
As long as the 99% dream about buying Birkin bags.
So, that’s the politics. The musical play, alas, doesn’t hack it.
“Queen of Versailles.” Written by Lindsey Ferrentino, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. St. James Theater, 246 West 44 St, NYC. Runtime 2hr40min. Opened Nov 9, 2025, closes Jan 6, 2026.