By the time Natasha Katz’ busy lights blacked out on The Queen of Versailles, two different notions had struck this bleary-eyed spectator: 1) Oscar Wilde’s quote defining a cynic as someone who knows “the cost of everything and the value of nothing” and 2) George Kelly’s 1925 Pulitzer-prize-winning, Craig’s Wife, in which housewife Harriet Craig places her immaculate home so far above everyone else in her life that she eventually is left completely alone with the damned abode.
Which is a way of saying that what we have in The Queen of Versailles—the Lindsey Ferrentino-Stephen Schwartz musical adaptation of Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary of the same name—is a contemporary spin on a woman who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing and who eventually meets predecessor’s Harriet Craig’s abandoned fate.
Furthermore, what we have is a Kristin Chenoweth vehicle that incorporates within it the makings of a stirring musical half its bloated size. Yes, in the final minutes Chenoweth as the real-life Jackie Siegel has an acting-singing challenge worthy of her and worth an audience’s shocked attention.
[Read Bob Verini’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
As of now, what’s on view will likely only excite Chenoweth fans completely happy to watch their fave-rave performer belt song after Schwartz song (only a few up to his Wicked standard) in innumerable Christian Cowan costumes that are equal to the dazzlers the show is meant to be, his Tony nom on the way.
So yes, The Queen of Versailles, with the always expert Michael Arden directing, is about the huge house Jackie’s doting but otherwise preoccupied husband/rich Westgate Resorts founder David (F. Murray Abraham) wants to give her for building in—where else?—Orlando, Florida. It’s his substitute for the time he never spends with her. (The size of Abraham’s below-the title-billing is so small in contrast to Chenoweth’s above-the title billing, it’s a metaphor for his puny role as contrasted to hers.)
The plot follows Jackie as she deals not only with David and her evolving Versailles replica but with a household her several children inhabit, although the only one on hand is increasingly drug-addicted adolescent Victoria (the effective Nina White). Joining them is poor cousin Jonquil (effective Tatum Grace Hopkins), who’s delighted with the new-found moolah but who recognizes Victoria’s despair when housed-obsessed Jackie does not.
(By the way, the unseen offspring are meant to suggest Jackie’s neglect but also save casting capital in a spectacle where set designer Dane Laffrey looks to have had no money denied for his likely Tony nom. Arden and Laffrey teamed up for last year’s much more compact Tony-winning Maybe Happy Ending.)
Telling their Queen Midas tale, Ferrentino and Schwartz—from time to time inserting Marie Antoinette scenes for the backdated picturesque—offer a first act with this and that and that and this spoken or sung as padding. By the act-ending moment when Chenoweth is downstage center declaring with “This is Not the Way” that the 2008 financial crash that bankrupted David won’t stop her, only boredom has set in.
Though the second act is livelier, it isn’t much livelier until Chenowith’s final knock-out turn. For approximately ten minutes The Queen of Versailles is so powerful that no No-Queens-Day protest need be organized.
What of the Schwartz score, conducted by always greatly reliable Mary-Mitchell Campbell? Coming up with ditties constantly, mostly to showcase Chenoweth’s chest prowess rather than her head strengths, he sometimes resorts to the downright silly. As Victoria and Jonquil, White and Hopkins bury a deceased pet with “Pavane for a Dead Lizard.” (You read that right). White does click with perhaps the best non-Chenoweth number, the angry “Pretty Always Wins.”
Significantly, there’s nothing wrong with the cast Chenoweth heads like Lady Liberty raising her lamp. Though Abraham disappears for such long periods of time he’s often all but forgotten, he’s his imposing self when present. Others contributing strongly (many members taking on multiple roles) include Melody Butiu as a steadfast Siegel household staffer, Cassondra James as a regal Marie Antoinette, and Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating as Jackie’s concerned parents. (By the way, Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant are the production’s choreographers, though this isn’t really a dance show.)
Final observation: At a point in the 1970s, Schwartz had three shows running on and off-Broadway: Godspell, Pippin, and The Magic Show. (There might even have been a fourth—The Baker’s Wife.) Right now, he’s matched the three-record with Wicked showing no signs of ever closing on Broadway, this one also on Broadway, and The Baker’s Wife currently revived off-Broadway. Congrats to him for that kind of rare happenstance. Imagine the personal pleasure as well as the weekly royalties.
The Queen of Versailles opened November 9, 2025 at the St. James Theatre. Tickets and information: queenofversaillesmusical.com
