SECOND ACTS

"The Queen of Versailles" and "The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire."

- BY HELEN SHAW

In Lauren Greenfield’s stunning documentary “The Queen of Versailles,” from 2012, its subjects—the billionaire “timeshare king” David Siegel; his shopaholic wife, Jackie; their eight kids; and various fluffy white dogs—represent a modern-day fall from grace. Greenfield, a noted photographer and filmmaker, embedded herself with the Siegels for years as the family built one of the largest private homes in America, a mega-tribute to Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles, in a Florida housing development. After the 2008 financial crisis, David’s overleveraged empire falters, and their half-finished Versailles—suddenly a metaphor for American folly—heads toward foreclosure. As the documentary ends, even Jackie’s appetite for excess seems to slacken. Has the Queen had . . . enough?

If only the playwright Lindsey Ferrentino and the composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz had been able to stop there, too. But that foreclosure-as-comeuppance arrives only halfway through their tonally queasy musical adaptation of “The Queen of Versailles,” now at the St. James. Ferrentino and Schwartz wrote the titular role for the Broadway diva Kristin Chenoweth, whose steely grip on the show (she’s also a producer) is embodied by her armored, indomitable Jackie. As the intermission curtain rings down, hubby David (F. Murray Abraham, speak-singing in a gravelly growl) might be retrenching financially, but “this is not the way our movie ends,” Chenoweth swears, aiming her laser-guided soprano at the sky.