“The Queen of Versailles,” starring Kristen Chenoweth with a score by Stephen Schwartz and book by Lindsay Ferrentino, played at Emerson’s Colonial Theatre from Aug. 1 to 25. An out-of-town tryout, the production is set to premiere on Broadway next season.
This is not a story about Marie Antoinette. It compares contemporary American capitalism with the late stages of life in royal France. Based on the 2012 award-winning documentary, “The Queen of Versailles,” about the Siegel family’s construction of a 90,000-square-foot replica of Versailles in Orlando during the 2008 financial crisis, the musical serves as a social satire on those who go from rags to riches, and how new money corrupts those who make it to the top. Michael Arden’s staging is meant to showcase the building of the Siegel’s “Versailles” and their perspective of the world they live in, both within their private bubble and of the public world which surrounds them.
Chenoweth shines as Jackie Siegel, an engineer-turned-Beauty Queen, who after a failed marriage, makes a name for herself competing in pageants. Chenoweth plays a raving materialist, who, despite intentional kindness, is spoiled and oblivious to the rest of the world. She slowly pushes away her loved ones due to her unhinged spending.
Siegel marries the wealthy “Time-Share King,” or David Siegel, portrayed by F. Murray Abraham, who depicts him as generous but isolated, as his main focus is to work days and nights to maintain his family’s lavish lifestyle. Abraham showcases someone who struggles to maintain their sanity, a character flaw defined by his cruelty and absence in darker times.
Along with the Siegel’s introverted daughter Victoria, adopted cousin Jonquil, nanny Sofia, and David’s business partner, Gary, the characters tackle their own relationship with materialism through “on-camera” interviews, family infighting over financial struggles, and songs showing their toxic relationships with money, or as Gary puts it, “we are like the small fish who tug onto sharks.” Characters like Sofia and Jonquil, who have always struggled with money, tell their stories “on camera” of how Sofia is unable to see her family and how Jonquil’s real parents struggled with addiction and poverty.
In adapting the source material, Ferrentino takes the characters’ stories from the documentary footage, and interviews from the family after the documentary film’s premiere. What felt true about so much of the content was that these characters represented real people who felt authentic emotions, all of whom were sorting out their own life struggles, no matter if in that moment rich, poor, or middle class.
Schwartz once again proves himself one of theater’s best composers with his work on the score, ranging from ballads about wanting more than life gives like “Caviar Dreams” to satirically making fun of upper-class consumer culture such as in “More and More, Higher Up.” Many songs also involve the ghostly Court of Versailles, with figures such as King Louis VII and Marie Antoinette, who act as a Greek chorus in between scenes and lament, on how they wish they had known their privilege and the pain they caused to their subjects. The purpose of this chorus is arguably not only the perspective of ghosts, but the world’s viewpoint as well. There is always an insecure undertone in the score, sappy lyrics and pleasing chord progressions, however artificial they are, that are dwarfed by Jackie’s love for material and money.
In addition to the talented cast, witty book, and masterful score, the set played an important part in the production by immersing the audience in the grandiose setting of Versailles, Florida. The design was built around a scaffolded ever-unfolding lobby with a grand staircase, gold padded walls, and galleys. These elements were brought together by a revolving TV screen, referenced in the lyrics of “Building Higher.” This construction gives the audience a sense of the Siegels’ looking at the world through digital glasses, rather than the reality of life outside their privileged bubbles. This production symbolizes the ignorance of income inequality and the price that is paid when we choose to ignore the value of other human beings.
Ultimately, through depictions of the isolated rich and their indifference toward others reminiscent of old European courts, “The Queen of Versailles,” succeeds as a story of, as Jackie says, “American Royalty.” The “American” part being laissez-faire capitalism, and “Royalty” being a callback to the Ancien régime of France, whose Palace of Versailles was a pinnacle of beauty, filled with paintings, statues, clothing, and monuments to themselves adorned in gold.
However, the musical doesn’t want the audience to forget what the same regime meant for the 97% of the French who starved. This is the parallel found in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, where even the Siegel’s, a self-made family, did nothing to help the 99 percent of people who suffered life shattering losses from the crash. The show can be seen as a commentary by the rest of the world, those who lost their jobs, homes, cars, bank accounts, and ultimately their families and loved ones’ livelihoods, while companies owned by families like the Siegel eventually recovered.
In contemporary politics, new corporations like Invida, which have given their founders immense success and provide opportunities for thousands, could crash any day with a new development in artificial intelligence chips in China or Japan, and many of those employed by the corporation could be laid off, just like in 2008.
This show is a reminder to those who have the means of unrestricted financial power, like the corporations who’ve recovered since the crash can survive, that the business of people surviving and living comfortable lives means nothing in the system of the financial gains the show is satirizing. If the purpose of these gains is for the personal homes and materialistic adventures of the wealthy, then the theme of indifference lies in the dreams of glamor themselves, and not the realities of real life which “The Queen of Versailles” is asking its audience to value.
