At its core, The Queen of Versailles presents abundance without excavation. Jackie and David build the world’s largest house not out of desperation, rebellion, or fear, but simply because they can. The musical watches this excess with a steady gaze—sometimes amused, sometimes critical—but rarely penetrates what drives it. Because the show stops at observation, the characters stay largely static. They react, they adapt, and they keep moving forward, but their internal landscapes remain untouched. The story expands in scale, yet the people inside it do not deepen.

This becomes most apparent after the death of their daughter. It should be the kind of event that alters the emotional direction of the narrative, forcing the characters to confront themselves differently. Instead, the grief is absorbed quickly and folded back into continuation. The house becomes something they complete “for her,” even though she resisted the project when she was alive, and the musical lets this contradiction pass without reckoning. What could have been a moment of tragic fracture ends up feeling like emotional displacement—a symbolic gesture that replaces rather than reveals mourning.

Ambition itself is not empty. Much of what humans build—art, architecture, political systems—comes from the desire to leave a mark, to exist visibly and permanently. The musical gestures in this direction, suggesting that Jackie and David might be contemporary heirs to that long lineage of builders. But it stops before asking the real question: are they fundamentally different from the people sitting in the audience, or simply amplified versions of impulses everyone holds in quieter forms? The show raises that possibility and then recedes from it, leaving the issue suspended.

This absence does not make the musical hollow. The surface is polished, the humor lands, and the spectacle is delivered generously. But the work feels unfinished because it does not investigate why this story should be sung. Accumulation becomes melody, but without an inner necessity behind it. The house grows scene by scene, yet the emotional volume contained within it stays surprisingly small.

Kristin Chenoweth’s performance introduces a contrast the show itself does not explore. Her voice—crystalline, agile, and unmistakably Glinda-like—cuts through everything with clarity and poise. It often becomes the most coherent storytelling element onstage, expressing intention even when the book hesitates. Whether this color is intentionally chosen to highlight Jackie’s performative surface or simply reflects Chenoweth’s natural artistic identity, the sound is unmistakable and commanding. David, too, anchors his musical material with consistent, steady singing that provides musical credibility even when the narrative drifts.

The lizard song between the daughter and the cousin remains one of the show’s more imaginative touches. For a brief moment, the musical finds a different emotional vocabulary—playful yet grounded—and suggests the tone it might have pursued more often. It opens a window onto a world where small details could hold as much meaning as grand gestures.

The staging moves in a different direction. The stage is filled with objects—luxury markers, furniture, layers of spectacle—as though accumulation itself were the dramatic engine. Instead of illuminating Jackie’s interior life, the density of props externalizes wealth without turning it into psychology. Even in scenes depicting financial strain, ornate props appear and disappear quickly, keeping the visual rhythm of abundance intact. The stage grows fuller and fuller, but the meaning behind the fullness remains unexamined.

The use of moving screens and live projections offers an immediate shorthand for Jackie’s influencer identity, but it stops at explanation. It tells us what she is in contemporary terms but not why visibility matters to her. The screen amplifies her image without revealing any fracture between public persona and private longing. The production keeps presenting her online presence, yet does not put that visibility under emotional pressure. A brilliant voice and overwhelming visual signaling coexist, but very little is asked of either.

At times, the storytelling resembles a scroll through social media: scenes introduced through recognizable symbols—academic degrees, pageant titles, fast-food chains, living arrangements—as though each moment arrives with its own set of tags. Subplots appear vividly and disappear quickly. David’s son, the niece, even the Versailles detour contribute striking images but leave little residue. The result is a show rich in incident yet elusive in accumulation.

Still, the musical captures something truthful about contemporary life: recognition has become a form of emotional reassurance. Being visible, being known—even briefly, even superficially—can feel stabilizing in a world where older forms of connection have thinned. The musical portrays this condition accurately. What it does not explore is what happens when visibility fails or what lies beneath when attention fades.

I do not believe anyone can judge another person’s way of life, so long as it remains within the bounds of law, morality, and social consent. But social consent forms slowly and often lags behind lived reality, especially as technology reshapes communication faster than shared norms can keep pace. Technology may have changed the medium of human connection, but the connection itself has not disappeared. What limits the musical is not its depiction of social media or its fixation on quantifiable visibility, but its reluctance to pursue the emotional meaning underneath those numbers.