USA TODAY National
NEW YORK — Let them eat McNuggets.
In 2004, Jackie Siegel and her billionaire husband, Westgate Resorts founder David Siegel, set out to build the biggest house in America: a $100-million-plus recreation of the French Palace of Versailles, complete with 10 kitchens, 14 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms, an ice-skating rink and a full-sized baseball field.
Jackie’s hubris – and her penchant for McDonald’s and caviar – was chronicled in the 2012 documentary “The Queen of Versailles,” which has now been turned into an ambitious and polarizing new musical from “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz starring Kristin Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham.
Like the film, the show charts the domino effects of the 2008 financial crisis, which stalled construction on the outrageous Florida mega-mansion as the Siegels faced foreclosure. But the musical also goes beyond the events of the documentary, showing how the Siegels bounced back financially even as they endured tremendous personal tragedy, including the death of Jackie’s 18-year-old daughter, Victoria, of a drug overdose in 2015.
It's unusual fodder for a Broadway show, but one that book writer Lindsey Ferrentino (“Amy and the Orphans”) hopes will challenge audiences with its cynical exploration of the American dream.
“It's not an aspirational story,” Ferrentino said in an interview late last month. “To me, it felt like this great American cautionary tale, and this saga of rise and fall and rise again.”
'The Queen of Versailles' musical aims to explore the 'contradictions' of Jackie Siegel
Like all great characters, Ferrentino says Jackie “contains multitudes of contradictions.” She is at times immensely selfish and delusional, but can also be “very generous and vulnerable. It’s very easy to judge her and write her off, but it’s also very easy to empathize with her.”
The musical traces Jackie’s humble roots in Endwell, New York, earning a computer engineering degree and working at IBM, before pivoting to a career in modeling and beauty pageants. As depicted in the show, she really did stay awake for her entire boob job, after negotiating a cheaper rate by skipping anesthesia.
“To me, that’s a great representation of her,” says Ferrentino, a Florida native who long-followed the Siegel family drama from afar. “She knew what she wanted and she was going to figure out a way to get it.”
Jackie was a single mom just out of an abusive relationship when she first met David at a party in Orlando in 1998. They married two years later, despite him being 30 years her senior.
“I’ve heard the phrase ‘gold-digger’ used for Jackie, but she was very aware that men own the world's gold, and if you want to get to the top, you've got to get a shovel,” Ferrentino says. “There’s a lot of calculated intelligence in her climb. I talked to childhood friends of hers that said even as a kid, she was doing carnivals on her block and charging entrance fees. She always had this thing where money and success were a driving factor for her.”
Lest you worry that Jackie has been given the “girl boss” treatment, the musical doesn’t shy away from the thornier aspects of her personality. The show suggests that in Jackie’s one-track pursuit of Versailles, she may have missed her daughter’s cries for help. And the musical ends with Jackie very much alone, insatiable and grasping as she wanders her mansion that is still unfinished to this day.
In addition to the Siegels, Ferrentino interviewed documentarian Lauren Greenfield and members of the family’s staff, many of whom still work for them. She also visited Versailles in both Florida and France, and sat in on Westgate timeshare presentations.
“I approached it like a journalist would in trying to get a 360 view,” Ferrentino says. “The only way that I, or any of our collaborators, agreed to do the musical is that we had full creative autonomy. They had to sign that over before we'd written a word. That’s a scary place to be as a subject, but they have been amazingly hands-off.”
'Queen of Versailles' is about the Siegels but it's not an endorsement
“The Queen of Versailles” officially opened at the St. James Theatre Nov. 9, and has proven sharply divisive among critics and theater fans. Many of them question whether it’s wise to give a platform to a figure like Jackie, who along with her now-late husband David, has been a longtime friend and supporter of President Donald Trump. Chenoweth also came under fire in September, after an Instagram comment expressing her “heartbreak” over the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“There's a difference between putting a character on stage and glorifying them, and we have a great history in theater of antiheroes,” Ferrentino says. “It's a very dangerous place as a culture for us to only be putting characters on stage that we agree with, because that's not why you go to the theater. We should not only be going to see morality plays.”
Rather, she aims to look at our society at large through “a critical lens,” showing how the Siegel family is emblematic of broader, systemic issues.
“They are Republican billionaires,” Ferrentino says. “We have a Republican billionaire as the president who is doing an insane construction project on the White House, that very much mirrors what the Siegels are doing with Versailles. It’s the most pressing thing to be looking at, frankly, when what's happening as a microcosm in Orlando is being mirrored in Washington, D.C. Everyone in America – even liberal people who may not want to see billionaires on stage – is complicit in creating a culture where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the wealth disparity is growing.”
Ultimately, Ferrentino adds, “you can make art about the people that you vehemently disagree with, and you can find their humanity even in the disagreements. I feel lucky that we're getting to do this weird, political musical on Broadway. Everyone can come and make up their own mind.”
"The Queen of Versailles" is now playing at the St. James Theatre (246 W. 44th Street).
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As Trump guts the White House, ‘Queen of Versailles’ is more ‘pressing’ than ever
Reporting by Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Local News in D.C.
Newsweek Top
America News
AlterNet
Raw Story
Orange County Register
Los Angeles Times Environment