St. James Theatre

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Ver-sigh. The biggest new musical of the fall arrives on a wave of high hopes, thanks to its promising main assets: music and lyrics by the veteran hitmaker Stephen Schwartz, in his first original Broadway score since Wicked; a starring role for Kristin Chenoweth, one of musical theater’s great leading ladies, as the Florida socialite Jackie Siegel, a walking symbol of American excess; the creative talents of director Michael Arden and set designer Dane Laffrey, who have been on quite a roll; and, in Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary about the Siegel family, a source with rich potential for adaptation. Like the 90,000–square-foot, $100-million palace that the Siegels are determined to build for themselves in Orlando, The Queen of Versailles is nothing if not ambitious. But like that same palace, it also feels misguided and very much still under construction. The Queen of Versailles | Photograph: Julieta Cervantes The underlying problem is that QOV doesn’t have a clear POV. Greenfield’s film is always alert to the grotesque disconnect between the Siegels’ lives of wasteful extravagance and the financial struggles of the employees in their orbit, including the nannies who care for their eight children. It is also a cautionary tale: Midway through the movie, the financial crisis of 2008 pulls the ornate rug out from under the Siegels’ empire and plunges Jackie’s future into uncertainty. What happens to a trophy wife when the shelf...