Review: The Queen of Versailles, Kristin Chenoweth in the Big House

More isn’t always more. That’s painfully clear in The Queen of Versailles, a white elephant of a musical playing at Broadway’s St. James Theatre. It’s the first new score Stephen Schwartz has written for Broadway since Wicked, with a book by Lindsey Ferrentino (Amy and the Orphans) and direction by two-time Tony winner Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending). It reunites Schwartz with Kristin Chenoweth, the Broadway superstar who originated the role of Glinda.

This A-list team has been able to create some genuinely arresting moments, but they are fleeting in a busy show that still doesn’t quite know what story it wants to tell. It’s like a house that continues to expand, the plaster seams of each new addition hideously apparent.

That’s not the case for its source material, the 2012 Lauren Greenfield documentary about timeshare billionaires David and Jackie Siegel and their quest to build the largest private home in America, inspired by the Palace of Versailles. Greenfield and her cameras were there to capture the Siegels as they were slammed by the 2008 financial crash, when credit dried up and they were forced to lay off household staff as well as thousands of workers at the family company, Westgate Resorts. The unfinished palace was put on the market, a “for sale” sign placed in front of Jackie’s American dream. It’s like a Greek tragedy dressed up as an episode of The Real Housewives of Orlando.

But does it sing? Not in a way you will recall the day after. The range of Schwartz’s pastiche betrays his struggle to find a voice for this show. As David, F. Murray Abraham leads the cast in “The Ballad of the Timeshare King,” a rollicking western production number that features the admittedly clever chorus, “Yippee-I-owe-you-owe-we-owe / Yippee-I-yay we sing.” This is your opportunity to see one of America’s great actors ride a rolling lion statue as befringed choristers kick up their heels around him (serviceable choreography by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant).

“Pretty Wins,” a driving anthem about oppressive beauty standards for Jackie’s daughter Victoria (Nina White, radiating angst) is destined to find a home in the audition binders of unconventionally attractive BFAs everywhere. But it is probably best we all forget “I Could Get Used to This,” a stab at Bush-era emo for Jackie’s niece Jonquil (Tatum Grace Hopkins, a feral cat finding her forever home).

Schwartz has written several lovely solo numbers for Jackie, like the “I want” number “Caviar Dreams,” which benefits from Chenoweth’s sparkling soprano, the aural manifestation of American optimism. It is certainly the lifeforce powering the Act I closer “This is Not the Way,” which Chenoweth delivers downstage center, selling us the promise of the second act better than any Westgate representative ever could.

One of the things that makes the documentary so compelling is watching Jackie maintain her beauty queen poise even as her kingdom crumbles around her. She’s a hustler, someone who didn’t come from money but clawed her way to the top. Chenoweth fully embodies her can-do spirit and refusal to be humiliated. That requires a certain amount of emotional armor: the megawatt smile and quirky line-readings that have long characterized Chenoweth’s appeal.

I kept wondering if we would ever see the act drop, and it does, ever so briefly, right before the 11 o’clock number “This Time Next Year.” But rather than a grand reckoning with her hubris and addiction to consumption, the song is a monument to motivated reasoning, allowing Jackie (and Chenoweth) to retreat into a distinctively American mania. That dramatically unsatisfying choice at least feels truthful. The real Jackie, her riches restored, has been aggressively promoting the musical on social media.

The cooperation of its subject means that Ferrentino’s book goes well beyond the scope of the film, depicting Jackie’s transformation into reality tv star and the emotional toll that has on her children. There’s also a framing device that keeps bringing us back to the historic court of Versailles, where Louis XIV (Pablo David Laucerica, master of oily smiles and quick changes) and his courtiers beckon Jackie to a golden life. It has the bittersweet aroma of an early-draft darling that the writers couldn’t bring themselves to slaughter. A late scene depicting aristocrats lined up for the guillotine naturally received tepid applause from the Broadway audience at the performance I attended, the night after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor.

Unable to tame Ferrentino’s sprawling book or Schwartz’s tonally incoherent score, Arden compensates by significantly escalating Broadway’s design arms race. Dane Laffrey’s massive set keeps unveiling new details, although our eyes are consistently drawn to the giant screen that regularly appears at its center (Laffrey also did the video). The stage is stuffed with props by Ray Wetmore and JR Goodman, giving us a palpable sense of the Siegels’ out-of-control consumption, but also the profligacy of Broadway producers. A Godiva store display rolls across stage for exactly 5 seconds for a sight gag, and David Aron Damane (in the underwritten role of the family chauffeur) inexplicably drives a golf cart over the Siegels’ marble floors.

Christian Cowan satisfyingly costumes Chenoweth in new money drag. We first encounter her wearing giant fuzzy pink sleeves over a glittering cocktail dress (please, somebody at the Broadhurst check to make sure all the Muppets are OK). She dazzles under Natasha Katz’s focus-enforcing lighting (crucial when the stage is this busy) and every lyric is pristine thanks to Peter Hylenski’s perfectly balanced sound design. It’s a powerful vision of excess, one in which we are very much willing participants.

But perhaps Broadway, with its increasingly out-of-reach ticket prices and militantly secular audience, is not the ideal venue to have a serious conversation about our compulsive need to fill the God-shaped void in our souls with ever more things, or the dopamine hit of the “buy” button as we endlessly scroll on our phones. The Queen of Versailles is too much a creature of excess to ever comment seriously on it.