Champagne wishes and caviar dreams with 'The Queen of Versailles'

“The Queen of Versailles” tells the story of a woman named Jackie Siegel. She has big ambitions, and she works various jobs while going to school. At night she watches “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” with her parents. Like Jackie, the musical’s star Kristin Chenoweth grew up in Oklahoma and recognizes her drive.

“I did wish for a big life in a different way that I wish than Jackie does,” she said. “I wanted to maybe be out of Oklahoma. I love my home state, but I wanted to see what else there was.”

Currently having its world premiere at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, the musical is a modern day rags-to-riches tale. Jackie marries the owner of Westgate Resorts and as an American socialite dreams of building her very own Versailles in the Florida swamp. This Broadway-bound musical reunites Chenoweth and musical composer Stephen Schwartz, who previously worked together on “Wicked.”

“The truth is that one of the things that interested me, and made me most enthusiastic about doing this project when I was first approached about it, is that Kristin and I have been looking for something to do together for a long time,” Schwartz said. “And when I watched the documentary and saw the actual Jackie Siegel, I thought it was such a good fit for Kristin to portray her.”

He notes that while the musical is based on a real person’s life, they take a lot of liberties. Their Jackie is fictional, though many of the events actually happened in the 2012 documentary of the same name. Schwartz’s song “Caviar Dreams” tells Jackie's origin story. It speaks of her yearning for a different life. It was that song as well as watching the documentary that convinced Chenoweth that there was something really special here.

“Where I want to be seems farther than those distant stars/ Far from those auto lots, chain restaurants, and ballroom bars/ Out where another kind of lifestyle bleeds/ With champagne wishes. And caviar dreams.”

Jackie’s journey to the gilded existence she feels she’s destined for isn’t always easy to watch. Chenoweth says Jackie has a big heart. Chenoweth tries her best to understand those choices while performing on stage night after night.

“As I was thinking about Jackie — and I can't believe I'm about to make a comparison here — I started thinking about myself,” Chenoweth said. “I grew up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. My parents were engineers.” Much to their dismay, she said, she did not pursue science or math. “It seemed to be the arts is where I was headed, and they encouraged it. And Jackie's parents encouraged it.”

Ultimately, Chenoweth said the show asks the questions: what do you do with instant fame? And what do you do with money?

“I call it an American fable,” she said. “And also a little bit of a, ‘Watch yourself. Watch yourself.’ It's a little bit of a cautionary tale.”

Like the hall of mirrors Jackie tries to copy in her Versailles home, the show digs into society’s obsession with the high life. It displays empathy for the character’s shopping addiction and ostentatious displays of wealth. Jackie often breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience, says Schwartz. Through the play she has a documentary film crew following her around in the best and the worst moments of her life. There are decisions she makes with hard consequences.

“And what she says at one point is, ‘I'm not that different from you,’” he said. “‘I may be a billionaire. I may be constantly, for decades, building the largest private home in America. But I'm really not that different from you.’”

Nevertheless, Jackie becomes obsessed with Marie Antoinette. At times, characters in costume from the French Revolution surround her, her own imaginary royal court. She even has a duet with Marie Antoinette, stealing the spotlight from the French queen.

“As a writer, I never want to have an author's message,” Schwartz said. “I really want to present a situation with it in as multifaceted a way as possible and everyone who comes to see it can have his or her own opinion about it.”

The audience watches Jackie’s wealth multiply and then nearly disappear following the Great Recession. The sets are large and grandiose in one scene and just as quickly change to a humble home or storefront. Jackie's single-minded focus to build and finish what would become one of the most expensive single-family homes in the nation gets derailed because really, the reason she wants to do it is shallow. “Because I can,” is a resounding mantra heard throughout this musical contrasting with a struggling nation.

“Right now we live in a country that is dealing with extreme income inequality and yet it seems that that's what we most honor and respect and revere in this country, is wealth and fame,” Schwartz said. “So, this is all a way of saying that we were very interested in looking at our value system.”

There’s nuance to this person, Chenoweth says. Themes that make an interesting, complicated, tricky character that any actor alive gravitates to.

“Queen of Versailles” runs through Aug. 25 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre.