A Stinging Critique of the American Dream Underlies “The Queen of Versailles”

Spoiler Caution: This essay contains significant plot details from The Queen of Versailles.

The Queen of Versailles officially opened in Boston at the Colonial Theatre on August 1, 2024, after several weeks of previews at the out-of-town tryout for this Broadway-bound production. It will close on August 25th and plans to head to Broadway in 2025. The show is based on the life stories of Jackie and David Siegel and on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary film of the same name that followed the Siegel family as they built. This new Stephen Schwartz musical, with the book by playwright Lindsey Ferrentino, takes a hard look at the American Dream and how we have allowed it to evolve, with a side quest into the potential downsides to seeking fame. Schwartz and Ferrentino’s Greek Chorus, the members of the aristocracy from two different generations of ostentatious French Courts (Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette – more on this later), comment in a song about the follies and successes of the American wealthy elite, comparing America’s “1%” to their own histories and consequences. As Jackie Siegel’s on-stage character sings, “We didn’t set out to build the biggest home in America / We just wanted to build the home of our dreams.” Longing for a dream home is a fairly universal American sentiment, as supported by the vast number of house-hunting and home improvement programs available on television and streaming services.

Cast of The Queen of Versailles. Photo Credit: Matthew Murphy.

Notably, David Siegel is portrayed by Oscar-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, and the Tony Award-winning Kristin Chenoweth presents the reality star personality of Jackie Siegel with the blessing and backing of Jackie and her family. Some of the characters represented use the names of their real-life counterparts, but some characters are heavily fictionalized and have been given names that do not correspond with anyone they may partially represent from the documentary or from the Siegels’ life.

The musical might feel light-hearted at first glance, but there are deeper, underlying messages right from the pre-show. These messages warn about the way the American Dream, gaining enough wealth to own one’s own home, has become twisted and unattainable as wealth inequality in the United States has expanded exponentially back to levels not seen since the era of the Robber Barons, and how dangerous this pattern has been historically. According to Bill Spitz, co-founder of Diversified Trust and author of “Robber Barons? Then and Now,” the Gini Coefficient, the statistic used by economists to measure wealth inequality was the same in 1928 as it measured in 2023 when Spitz published his white paper, and that the United States had the highest rate of inequality among all major industrialized nations as of June 2023. The show also does not shy away from portraying the personal costs of living life in the public eye, especially for those caught up in the periphery of the person(s) seeing fame.

Jackie Siegel’s media brand revolves around the idea that if she and her husband can come from humble beginnings to become self-proclaimed billionaires, then anyone can do the same. “Anyone can become American Royalty” Jackie (Chenoweth) tells us in QoV. But is that true? If you cannot expect to inherit wealth, or gain fame from some kind of special talent like sports or music, is it reasonable for the average American to expect to be able to live a rags-to-riches story without doing anything illegal or immoral to get ahead? Can the average person become a millionaire or a billionaire before they retire? A college degree in computer engineering did very little to help Jackie get ahead, the audience is told, and David Siegel dropped out of college before finishing his degree in marketing and management. The promise of a college degree, once an almost guaranteed way to earn your way out of poverty for those who could achieve academically, is no longer assured or even necessary to bring financial success. The gates barring Americans from home ownership and the American Dream have grown larger and more imposing as rents, interest rates, and the cost of living have increased unsustainably. During the song “Little Houses” in Act II, the fictionalized nanny character, Sofia, talks about how she came to the US from the Philippines so she could earn money to support her family back home and someday buy a house for her father and for herself in her home country. Sofia, played by Melody Butiu, references the history of the Marcos dictatorship and the notorious material consumption of Imelda Marcos, including her famous shoe collection. “Everyone here in America, they hope to have what Miss Jackie and David have,” she also reminds us in Act I.

The Siegel’s Orlando castle, which they have modeled after the Palace at Versailles, has been under construction off-and-on since 2004. The excesses of national resources that were poured into the original Versailles between 1661 and 1792 famously contributed to the civil unrest that culminated in the French Revolution and the violent overthrow of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The Court of the Sun King (Louis XIV) who first created Versailles, and the later Court of Marie Antoinette, feature throughout the musical to act as Greek Chorus, both reflecting back and commenting on the action as it unfolds.

The show begins with an introduction from Louis XIV, played by Pablo David Laucerica. Louis addresses the audience and his Court to announce that he will be building a grand new palace for himself. “‘Tis for the very best of reasons,” he sings, “. . . because I can!” This phrase returns again and again throughout the show, as the answer to why the uber-wealthy use their vast resources to build vanity projects, like Versailles. Jackie (Chenoweth) echoes the same phrase in her first song, in the very next scene. It’s the same reason David gives when Gary, played by Greg Hildreth, questions the decision to build Versailles just after their honeymoon in France. In fact, “Because I Can” and “Because We Can” are the titles of the first two songs of Schwartz’s score.

The singing courtiers bemoan the unsuitable location for Louis’s new palace, due to the instability of the swampy marshland and lack of running water at Versailles, but no one dares to object to the Sun King. The analogy is apt in comparison to the American Versailles, as the original was under construction from roughly 1661-1715. That is 54 years for the original construction timeframe of the Palace at Versailles, and the Siegels’ Versailles has been under construction for approximately 20 years at this point. Louis XIV’s immediate successors, his great-grandson Louis XV, and his great-great-great-grandson, Louis XVI both continued to make extensive improvements at Versailles during their reigns. Louis XIV moved the entire government of France from Paris to Versailles, and forced many of his nobles, including his heirs, to move to Versailles so he could keep a strong control over them. Jackie envisions her Versailles as a generational residence as well, referring to Versailles as her legacy and how she and her family will be remembered, echoing Louis’ sentiment from the opening song. “My own Versailles will be my legacy / How they’ll remember my family and me,” she sings.

Louis XVI’s queen was Marie Antoinette, played by Cassondra James, who joined the Greek Chorus during the second act. One of Marie Antoinette’s contributions to Versailles was the construction of a small working farm and cottage with outbuildings that was built so that she could retire to her farm on a whim and pretend to be a peasant without any of the dark realities of peasant life at the time. She was so removed from the reality of the lives of her subjects that she found it restful to play at farming and to pretend to be poor. She tells the audience that the reason she went to the trouble to have the farm built, dig a lake, and displace an entire town for the land, was “. . . because I could!,” echoing the Act I exclamations of Louis XIV, as well as both Jackie and David Siegel. It is important to note here, that American audiences in general may not be knowledgeable enough about French history to understand that the Sun King and Marie Antoinette did not actually live during the same time, and may become confused by the interaction of their characters. The two rulers in real life were five generations apart and Marie Antoinette was born forty years after Louis XIV’s death.

This desire for limited doses of “the simpler life” is echoed in the second act when Jackie takes Victoria to visit her parents’ small house in Endwell, NY. Jackie and Victoria both seem restored and rested by their stay in a simple, little house, living a normal life for a short time. They return home determined to convince David to sell their large current home and Versailles and embrace a simpler life where they can all be happier and closer to each other. This sentiment seems to be much more important to Rikki, however, than it is to Jackie in the end.

Audiences learn that Jackie’s parents, John and Debbie Mallery, were the first in their families to ever own a home. We are told that their house costs $20,000, less than the cost of Jackie’s designer purse when she visits them in a scene in Act II. We also learn that achieving homeownership required the Mallerys, played by Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating, to work second or even third-shift blue-collar jobs to purchase and maintain their slice of the American Dream. It is important to remember that they probably bought their small, modest house circa 1965, when the median home price in the United States was about $20,000 and the median family income was just under $7000, according to census.gov, so the cost of a home was about 2.85 times the median annual income of the American family. It’s also worth remembering that in the 1960s, it was unusual for married American women to earn an income, and most middle-class families could comfortably live on a single income, which is not the case today. Today, the median cost ratio for homeownership in America overall is more like 5.6, but in Honolulu, San Jose, and San Francisco, it is 12.1, 12.0, and 11.3, respectively. On the East Coast, as in Miami, New York, and Boston, those ratios are 8.7, 7.1, and 6.5, according to Alexander Hermann and Peyton Whitney at The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The celebration of wealth and opulence comes to a screeching halt when the show portrays Victoria “Rikki” Siegel’s death by drug overdose in 2015 when she was just 18 years old. The show’s portrayal suggests that Rikki, played by Nina White, was struggling with becoming an unintentional public figure during her teenage years, which may have contributed to her issues with both prescription and illegal drugs. Victoria’s Voice, the Siegel’s foundation in her honor offers a variety of programs designed to support schools and families to keep children and teens safe from drug overdoses, including connecting them with naloxone providers.

The building of a large project like Versailles should, in theory and in practice, create jobs and stimulate the economy for a lengthy period of time. In France during the transition from the Renaissance into the Enlightenment, rulers and wealthy members of society were expected to create paid work for artists and artisans. The responsibility of governments and monarchies to care for their subjects was understood to balance the majesty of their power with the magnanimity of their noblesse oblige, their duty to help those less fortunate as an obligation of the privileges of power and wealth. Even the Robber Barons created work for artisans and artists in the construction of their mansions and vacation homes. But the concept of noblesse oblige only promotes balance when those with privilege and power understand that their fortunate circumstances are not proof of their superiority over those without. The doomed members the of Court of Marie Antoinette pause on their way to the guillotine to congratulate the “American aristocracy” on controlling their “peasant class” by making them believe they can someday join the wealthy elites and convincing them to vote against their own interests in the hope of doing so. “Someday when I am rich, I’ll spend my money so much better,” sings the ensemble during the song “Watch.”

In a well-structured plot, with both musical and conceptual themes woven throughout, we are entertained and informed as we get to know the generous, quirky, contradictory, strong, and vulnerable character of Jackie Siegel as she pursues her American Dream despite the personal costs. We see both her and her husband David’s rags-to-riches stories, and the personal and financial challenges they have faced together along the way. In the end, Jackie asks “When is it enough? When will we know it’s enough?” as she realizes building Versailles has already been so costly in so many ways, and it is still not completed. Will it still all be worth it when it is finally finished? Jackie Siegel does not give up, however. Repeating one theme of the show inspired by Robin Leach’s tagline from his Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (1984-1995), Chenoweth gives us the last line of the show: “I hope every single one of you, just like me, will get your champagne wishes and caviar dreams!”

In the interest of full disclosure, this author was employed as a stitcher/tailor for this production and worked behind the scenes on this show during its Boston residency at the Colonial Theatre. She was able to view the show in its entirety from the audience on Opening Night thanks to her work on the show, and has been able to view the show many times from the monitor near her sewing machine.