The Cast of The Queen of Versailles – Credit Matthew Murphy
Presented by the Emerson Colonial Theatre
Based on The Queen of Versailles documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield
Book by Lindsey Ferrentino
Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
Directed by Michael Arden
Choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant & Christopher Cree Grant
Music supervision by Mary-Mitchell Campbell
Orchestrations by John Clancy
July 16 – August 25, 2024
Emerson Colonial Theatre
106 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
Critique by Kitty Drexel
BOSTON — The audience was packed into the Emerson Colonial Theatre on Thursday night to see Kristin Chenoweth and F Murray Abraham in Ferrentino and Schwartz’s The Queen of Versailles musical. The musical officially opened on August 1 after much ado: Mayor Michelle Wu proclaimed July 24 as Kristin Chenoweth Day for Chenoweth’s “contributions to the betterment of the City of Boston.” It was also Chenoweth’s birthday. Happy belated birthday, Kristin Chenoweth!
FYI the links that should allow audience members to order drinks and food delivered to your seat don’t work. (We tried multiple QR codes in our row and the row in front of us). Despite the page on the website. Despite the foyer monitors’ messaging. You will have to choose either the bathroom line (wash your damn hands) or the concessions line. 20 minutes is not long enough to do both when the show is sold out.
Audience members and some enterprising theatre staff were dressed in their finest pink and gold pieces. Attendee fashion ranged from blazers with designer sneakers to ballgowns. Satin tops to flowy dresses. All sorts braved the bawls-hot weather to flaunt their finest ‘fits. Thankfully, the Emerson Colonial had the AC cranked to accommodate the heat and the bold statements.
Pink and gold are the signature colors of Jackie Seigel, proto-influencer and billionairess famous for the Lauren Greenfield 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles and 2022 reality TV show Queen of Versailles Reigns Again. The musical is named after the 2012 documentary and tells the rags-to-riches-down-to-rags-back-to-riches stories (and villain origins) of Jackie and her husband David Seigel, the Timeshare King of Westgate Resorts.
QoV is meant to be an underdog story about Jackie’s ups and downs as a middle-class woman who marries a successful multi-level marketing scheme conman. She becomes a billionaire and loses it all during the Great Recession of 2008. Mrs. Seigel calls herself the Queen of Versailles after a honeymoon trip she took to Paris with David. She saw Louis XIV’s famed palace and decided she wanted a Versailles of her own because she could. Someone should’ve told Jackie then what happened to Marie Antoinette.
The Queen of Versailles musical incorporates the major events and character development of the documentary, the family’s pop culture tabloid drama, and moments from the reality TV show. Jackie (Kristin Chenoweth in all her blazing glory) and David Seigel (F Murray Abraham who sings and dances up a small but respectable storm) are in love despite David’s advanced age and Jackie’s initial poverty. David promises Jackie anything she wants if she marries him. He adopts her daughter Victoria (Nina White), and her niece Jonquil (Tatum Grace Hopkins), and they build a family together in Orlando, Florida. Sofia their housekeeper (Melody Butiu) is the Siegels’ unofficially official house mom. Stephen DeRosa, Greg Hildreth, and Isabel Keating play secondary characters. Stacie Bono and Michael Mulheren are understudies for Jackie and David.
The hype is accurate. Chenoweth is as amazing as everyone says she is. She captures Jackie Siegel’s capricious (bipolar?) nature of binging and spending while doling out heaping helpings of love and irresponsibility. Chenoweth nails Jackie’s goofy Mom-joke grin and beauty pageant stances (Chenoweth was a pageant gal in her day). If musical theatre extravaganzas and Broadway stars are your thing, this musical is for you.
F Murray Abraham gives David Siegel a humanity and personality in this musical that David doesn’t even give himself in the documentary or TV show. Abraham gets a show-stopping number about being the Timeshare King that he nails with bravado and minimal dancing. He’s likable and cunning. Choreography team Lauren Yalango-Grant & Christopher Cree Grant would do wonders with the real David Siegel.
Major kudos go to costume designer Christian Cowan and technical costume designer Ryan Park for bestowing upon Chenoweth the bountiful assets of Jackie Siegel. Jackie is 5’8”. Chenoweth is 4’11”. The metaphor mostly works, and the outrageous costumes such as the BRAT green construction drip and pink, sparkly everything else help distract from what isn’t there to what is. #VegasCowgirlVibes
Nina White looks ethereal in Act Two’s white dress. You have a damn fine mix voice and kick ass as Victoria. It needed to be said.
The hair and wig design by Cookie Jordan is beautiful. Giving Chenoweth Jackie’s famous extensions is gilding the lily. She’s already gorgeous. The cake takers are the wigs used in scenes depicting the French Revolution of 1793. The character Marie Antoinette’s wig (Cassondra James looking and sounding fabulous) looks like it was stolen from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 Marie Antoinette. (It sounds obvious when I write it, but it needs seeing to be believed.)
The Siegel Family in The Queen of Versailles – Credit Matthew Murphy
Jordan outfits the ensemble similarly, from palace staff to courtiers. The wig of Pablo David Laucerica as Louis XXIV flows gracefully like the water in a Versailles fountain. It matches the fullness and power of Laucerica’s masterful operatic tenor. The French aristocracy wished it had wigs this rich.
Speaking of couture, Ferrentino & Schwartz’s musical is tailored to Chenoweth’s strengths. She’s belting and using her mix in contemporary Florida. She’s dazzling us with her legit soprano when she transcends time and space to appear in 18th-century France. Others will sing this music. They will even sing it well. It will only ever be composed for Kristin Chenoweth.
Melody Butiu (from Here Lies Love on Broadway) gives the character of Sofia the same strength and dignity as Sofia Flores, the Seigels’ housekeeper, in the documentary with an added flare of comedy. Butiu balances hope and heartbreak in her portrayal. Flores worked diligently to give her family in the Philippines a better life. In this musical, Sofia gets to go home.
As far as I’m concerned, Muumi the Pomeranian is the real Queen of Versailles. She performs well under pressure and steals every scene she’s in. You’re killing it, Bitch. #AdoptDontShop.
The musical we see on stage today will not be the musical that ships out to Broadway in 2025. Its first act is tight, perfectly paced, and balanced. The French Revolution segments (right before the Reign of Terror, tee hee.) reflect the unscrupulous spending of the Siegel’s heyday. Ferrentino’s book shows and tells us enough exposition to understand this family by quoting moments from the documentary with Schwartz’s kicky musical numbers.
Its second act needs work. If Act One is the gutsy brawn of the show, Act Two is the heart. Ferrentino and Schwartz show us their characters’ fears and desires. Victoria, Jackie, and Jonquil show us who they are. (But not David. Never David. His job is his personality.) Victoria and Jonquil have a song about lizard death that will likely get cut or replaced because it halts the musical while the girls toke up.
Victoria, Jonquil, Sofia, and Jackie have a tender quartet about little houses holding big homes. It shows their sweet, vulnerable sides behind the pomp of wealth; for seven minutes, the Siegels and Sofia get to be human beings. They tell us what all of the BS is for: family and love. It is the heart of the musical. If everything else goes to Hell, I hope this lovely number stays.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. They are hoarding resources that others desperately need while flaunting their ability to live beyond paycheck to paycheck. Maybe they’re creating jobs but, as we see in QOV, they take them away again because they can. Y’all only have that money because you value your greedy stakeholders more than you do the employees who perform the frequently backbreaking work to make you that money. Westgate Resorts is a pyramid scheme that John Oliver discussed on Last Week Tonight March 2023. The Siegels made their money by exploiting middle-class folks. They aren’t mooches; they’re people looking for a tiny break when y’all have so much.
Jackie Siegel deserves more credit for combining her hustle and her vast intelligence. Her family and the tabloid world have made a lot of money by ridiculing her emotional and physical work. The truth of the matter is, regardless of one’s opinions on billionaires, fame, and the capitalist objectification of greedy influencers, Jackie Siegel saved her family from ruin by using her heart and her business savvy. Siegel won pageants and married up by monetizing her appearance and her warm personality. Labor that society expects to be invisible. Siegel managed the home that her family lived in and executed a lot of emotional labor to keep her family as unified as she could while also connecting with the Greenfield documentary team. She produced her family’s life before there was such a thing. She opened a thrift store on her family’s land to try to make money by selling her family’s copious amounts of stuff. We judge, but that’s a smart idea.
We rightly judge her for going on spending sprees when they were “broke.” Shopping was her reliable but toxic coping mechanism. Anyone leans into reliability when the chips are so down they are six feet underground. At least Jackie was coping. Meanwhile, her husband was having a tantrum about losing money that wasn’t his and refusing to sell the Vegas hotel because he didn’t want to even though it would’ve saved the family, Jackie hauled ass. David whined about electricity. Jackie got shit done. Billionaires shouldn’t exist, but Jackie’s discipline and determination are exemplary despite her blatant thoughtlessness and selfishness.
The Queen of Versailles runs through August 18 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. It does everything it sets out to do: We learn about the Siegel Family’s rise and epic fall from wealth. Ferrentino, Schwartz, Chenoweth, and Abraham transported us into their world, 4th wall be damned. We were entertained. QOV may not be a musical for the ages – regional and community theatres will be hard-pressed to recreate Dane Laffrey’s legendary set design- but it is for this age.
May the Siegel’s never influence another presidential election, and float peacefully into obscurity. God save the Queen.
QueenOfVersaillesMusical.com
Facebook/Instagram: @QOVMusical
God save the Guillotine
Till England’s King and Queen
Her power shall prove:
Till each appointed knob
Affords a clipping job
Let no vile halter rob
The Guillotine
France, let thy trumpet sound –
Tell all the world around
How Capet fell;
And when great George’s poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine
When all the sceptre’d crew
Have paid their Homage, due
The Guillotine
Let Freedom’s flag advance
Till all the world, like France
O’er tyrants’ graves shall dance
And peace begin.
– Joel Barlow, 1794
