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‘The Queen of Versailles’ Review: Kristin Chenoweth Shines in a Lavish New Musical With a Social Satire Bite
With a rich, affecting score by Stephen Schwartz, 'The Queen of Versailles' offers Chenoweth a rich opportunity to flex her dramatic muscles.
“ The Queen of Versailles,” the much-anticipated reunion of “Wicked” collaborators Kristin Chenoweth and Stephen Schwartz, offers the diva her richest opportunity to date to flex her dramatic muscles, while inspiring the composer-lyricist to the most emotionally affecting score, bar none, of his long career. The making of that documentary provides the Act 1 structure for Orlando’s own Jackie Siegel (Chenoweth) to review the backstory to her great endeavor: building the largest private home in America on the order of Louis XIV’s fabled mirrored palace. Her much-produced PTSD drama “Ugly Lies the Bone” demonstrated a moral conscience second to none among her generation of playwrights, and she wields it here to show the vapidity of Jackie’s “Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams,” a recurring motif in the score, and their excruciating impact on those around her.
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