America has always been a land of capitalist contradiction. In one breath, we glorify the exploits of the rich and famous and aspire to their lives. In the next, we mock their eccentricities and deride their garish excesses.
Do we want to eat the rich or become them? That conflict lies at the heart of the starry new world premiere musical, “The Queen of Versailles,” which sashays into the Emerson Colonial Theatre for a pre-Broadway run from July 16 to Aug. 25. Stoking the show’s buzz is the anticipated reunion of two luminaries behind musical colossus “Wicked” — Emmy and Tony award-winning actress Kristin Chenoweth (“Pushing Daisies,” “Glee”) and celebrated composer Stephen Schwartz (“Godspell,” “Pippin”).
Inspired by the award-winning 2012 documentary of the same name, “Queen of Versailles” tells the riches-to-rags (and back to riches) story of a Florida family building the largest private home in America, modeled after France’s Palace of Versailles, just as the housing bubble bursts and the 2008 financial crisis nearly bankrupts them. The charismatic center of the story is scene-stealing Jackie Siegel (Chenoweth), a whiplash-inducing combination of “Real Housewives” chutzpah, disarming warmth and optimism, and blithe naïveté worthy of a sitcom. Her cranky-but-swaggering husband, David (played by F.
Murray Abraham), 30 years her senior, is the billionaire “time-share king” and founder of Westgate Resorts. The idea of adapting Lau.