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Why THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES is closing earlier | The truth behind the Broadway show's demise
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Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic and Content Creator)
So the timeline is this the Queen of Versailles begins performances at the St James Theatre on Broadway a couple of weeks later. After previews, the Queen of Versailles celebrates its Broadway opening night. This was in November. A few weeks later, it is announced that the Queen of Versailles will end its run disappointingly early on January 4th. Shortly after that, it is announced that the Queen of Versailles will end its Broadway run even earlier, before Christmas, on December 21st. And a statement is released that talks about the challenging environment right now for producing new musical theatre on Broadway. And while that isn't strictly untrue, there is a much bigger story to discuss when it comes to the Queen of Versailles and what went wrong with this particular musical. And with the economics of Broadway having perhaps become more cutthroat than ever, it is worth discussing why this show is closing so suddenly and now even earlier than anticipated. To fully understand that situation, there are various different factors that we have to consider with nuance and understanding. And today, we're gonna build that house. But first, an introduction. Oh my God. Hey, my name is Mickey Jo and I am Obsess All Things Theatre. I am a theatre critic and content creator. Last month I traveled to New York to go and see a bunch of new openings, among them the Queen of Versailles at the St. James Theatre. By the time that I was sharing my review, it had actually already been announced that the show was going to close in January, at which point I decided there wasn't really much of a reason for me to make a separate review or podcast about the reasons why it was closing. I just sort of baked it into my review because I do think that the word of mouth and the inherent flaws in the material are a sizable contributing factor that isn't necessarily being talked about, or at least isn't being talked about by the outlets reporting on it and in the official statements, though you know that would be difficult for them to address. It's being talked about in the comment sections. When they announced, however, that the show would be closing even earlier, I decided that all of this confusion, all of this conversation and growing controversy was worth a little bit of discussion and I hope, as always, to bring a little bit of balance and nuance and consideration to what has become an increasingly contentious conversation around the closing of this particular show. Think pieces are being written, much is being said. Performers are taking to social media to defend their peers, their colleagues, and the sense of community that everyone wants valued around Broadway, one which everyone generally hopes will, if not, you know, nurture and support each individual show, will at least respect it. But then, the Queen of Versailles has been the subject of some controversy since before it even arrived on Broadway, a history that we will briefly get into today. We're going to talk about everything that has gone wrong for this show and why it is now closing even earlier in late December. If you would like to share your thoughts in the comment section down below, please do so. Remembering, certainly, as we approach the political elements of this conversation, that everyone you engage with online is a human being and ought to be treated with basic humanity, decency and respect. And as always, if you enjoy listening to what I have to say and would like to hear more of my perspectives on theatre news, Broadway happenings, etc, as well as my thoughts on Queen of Versailles as a show and the controversy surrounding its star, Kristen Chenoweth, some weeks ago. You can find all of those existing videos wherever you are seeing or hearing this, or you can subscribe here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms. For now, though, let's talk about it. Why is the Queen of Versailles closing so soon at the St. James? So here's the history of the show. The Queen of Versailles opened out of town at the Ellison Colonial Theatre in Boston, where there was some excitement around it. And you know, Kristin Chenoweth, big Broadway star recognized across the country. Big deal for her to be developing this pre Broadway show. Big deal for this theatre also to be housing a pre Broadway show that was announcing at this time that this was going to be ahead of a Broadway run. A new score from Stephen Schwartz. Everything that I think they were hoping would make Broadway audiences excited seemed to work for the show well enough in Massachusetts, which is not shade against Massachusetts. It's also worth pointing out that that was prior to the Charlie Kirk commentary of it all, which I have discussed extensively elsewhere. But I will refresh everybody on now, which I can tell you as a part of this conversation I personally have been looking forward to all day. Before we do though, worth reflecting on the feedback from the run in Boston because there was a lot of excitement and some of that translated into positive word of mouth. Even then, though, there were a great many responses which I heard some of them were brought to the comments sections of some of my other videos in which I was talking about the Queen of Versailles as a pre Broadway show. Looking ahead to the next season, the one that we are currently in, the strange, strange Broadway season we're currently experiencing with people saying that it needed work, which is a kindly euphemism that essentially means this developing show has large problems, some of which it seems were addressed, if not entirely rectified when the show made the move to Broadway, and others of which were not. And of course this is all inherently subjective and my opinion about the thing when we're talking about the material, but I think that boils down to the fact that you can rewrite a bad song, but you can't necessarily do that much to fix a flawed premise. And inherently, what the Queen of Versailles is, I think is a bad idea on stage, not just because it's based on an acclaimed documentary, which hasn't necessarily been fodder for the best Broadway musicals of the past. Grey Gardens is an exception to this rule, but recent attempts like how to Dance in Ohio, they haven't necessarily been critical or commercial hits. And I think it's because in the adaptation process not enough care is necessarily being taken to extrapolate the filmmaker's perspective and find a way to actualize that on stage, because it all reads very differently. And the way that the content of the documentary plays out versus what is being presented in the musical adaptation of the Queen of Versailles is altogether quite different. And our interpretation of Jackie Siegel as a character is quite different as well. Which brings us incredibly neatly to the next issue with this inherently flawed premise, which is the depiction of this Republican uber Wealthy, disillusioned woman who is a supporter of current US President Donald Trump and who, as depicted within the documentary and the Broadway show based on it, was building is building, I believe, perhaps still, who knows, the largest private home in America, which was sort of ill timed then. And this was captured within the documentary because the 2008 financial crash happened and impacted the construction and brought everything to a standstill. It's a big part of why the documentary became so astonishing, because it was able to re examine this huge pivot in her life and look at it through the lens of this incredibly specific moment. But while documentaries and really anything captured on screen acts more like a time capsule when you're presenting something live on stage, our immediate connection to it necessitates more of an emotional buy in. And it's going to, whether it wants to or not, enter into conversation with the community that it's playing to. And on Broadway, that means America and where America is right now. And for a show about this extraordinary display of wealth during a time of real nationwide financial crisis, it came across arguably at best, as a little thoughtless. And some were raising concerns about this before the show had even opened on Broadway and voicing their fears over the fact that no one seemed to be really asking for this, that no one had been clamoring for a Queen of Versailles musical. And this didn't seem like a great story to be telling right now, unless it really had something to say, which in my review I suggested that it felt like it didn't really. It felt like it tried to be deliberately apolitical and cater to both sides of the political spectrum within the audience. Of course, that wasn't Queen of Versailles only pre Broadway problem. As much as I really hate the notion of pinning the failures of this show to any individual, but particularly to a woman, because that's something that we tend to do repeatedly. Like Rachel Zegler bearing so much of the weight of the Snow White movie, or even the people saying, no, it's not Rachel Zegler. We should blame Gal Gadot and this notion of like, no, don't blame that woman, blame this different woman, because there must be a woman somewhere who can become the scapegoat. In this instance, we do have to talk about all of the Kristin Chenoweth of it all and everything that was happening before the Queen of Versailles even began previews. And this was just before the Queen of Versailles began previews. So it was very unfortunate timing. Because back in September, after the assassination of right wing agitator and punisher Charlie Kirk, Kristen shared comments on social media, sympathizing with his family, expressing her thoughts that he was now in heaven, and most controversially, suggesting also that she appreciated some of his perspectives, a comment that she has never meaningfully clarified either on social media or in subsequent interviews and conversations around it. And there was a sit down interview with New York 1's Frank Delella, which I gather was meant to kind of resolve the situation situation around this. Unfortunately, she wasn't really pushed during that to really meaningfully apologize or address the real concerns. And I've said an awful lot about this and if you want to know my entire thoughts on it, I would much prefer you go and watch or listen to that other conversation that I have had around this because it's more nuanced and there is so much to say about the way that we hold people to a standard. There is much to say about the way that I think the gay male community centered themselves in this discourse. The one thing I want to add on as an addendum to everything that I said over there, which did involve, if it sounds like I'm defending her, did involve an awful lot of criticism of Kristin Chenoweth for, you know, never meaningfully apologizing, never really talking about what it is that she meant with this. The one thing I want to add is that so frustratingly, in spite of the fact that she publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for presidency during the most recent election, you don't have to look far to find comments beneath posts about the Queen of Versailles that are calling Kristin Chenoweth Maga, saying, oh well, Chenoweth's Maga now, thank God it's closing early, she'll have time to go to the Christmas party in Mar a Lago. And I've never actually tried to pronounce Mar a Lago. I don't know how to say it. Honestly, it's a weird name. Ironically, I do think that the Seagulls have on occasion thrown Christmas parties in their palace of Versailles replica home, which you would have to assume if the Broadway show was still running, would have included invitations to many of the key players from that, including Kristin Chenworth. Perhaps it still might. And that potentially would not be a good look. But you know, I'm not her publicist and if she were listening to her publicist, then all of this may have played out very differently. Unless she was, in which case maybe get a new publicist. Because on the one hand, while I do think that celebrities have to expect that their social media activity is going to be scrutinized to a certain extent. And we should remember that this was a comment she was leaving and this was not something that she was like posting to the grid. This is not something that she was uplifting and enshrining in the way that it is now being remembered. I think what is super unfair is this misrepresentation of what it is that she said. This was not an endorsement of Donald Trump. And I think it's a very flawed ideological approach that expects and demands perfect allyship and is ready because she said, like she appreciated some perspectives of Charlie Kirk that will now automatically assume, oh well, she's maga. She's maga. Now, you take one step over that line and you're maga. You have become a fascist sympathiser. You have become far right, you have become alt right. You clearly voted for Trump and you can never take a step back. Why are we so inclined on the left side of the political spectrum to push everyone towards far right ideology? And I know, as I discussed in that other video, that so much of what Charlie Kirk said was so extreme and so I'm not even going to say divisive and polarizing because that suggests that there are multiple responses that you could have had to this that were reasonable. So much was said that was so objectively dreadful that it's that you can understand why people immediately had the question which perspectives Kristen. And that's still never really been addressed. And I think that's the question she's never going to be able to get out from underneath as long as she wants to continue her career. Within the next decade, you would have to assume there will be another Broadway musical that will be a star vehicle around her. Another one for Idina as well, quite possibly Idina Menzel, her former Wicked co star, as I shared in a little bit of a video essay not too long ago about their their bizarrely similar and not particularly successful Broadway trajectories post Wicked. This is something that they both do every few years. Not only that, Pushing Daisies, the TV show for which Kristen won an Emmy, is being talked about for a relaunch and a return. And unfortunately, a huge part of her audience is a gay male fan base who do seem to be quite substantially alienated by these comments. And I think for her to be able to improve her brand right now, which is looking a little tarnished, she is going to have to address this more substantially. And so while it would be challenging to really analyze all of this without, you know, surveying the gay men of New York, which admittedly is not impossible. You just go to the right bars. You'd have to assume that a lot of people who would have gone to see the Queen of Versailles simply because Kristin Chenoweth was back on Broadway and in a sparkly pink gown no less, giving a diva performance, ultimately stayed away because of the controversy and because they were suddenly feeling disenfranchised. Which does not pair well with that initial question of who was going to see this in the first place. If there was not an obvious demographic and you've alienated a lot of the people you were hoping to bring in by casting the star name that is Kristin Chenoweth, then you're really leaving yourselves with an audience problem. And she wasn't the only star name in this cast. She was joined by F. Murray Abraham. But he was also coming into this show with controversy of its own. So the whole thing starts to feel a little misguided at this point.
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Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic and Content Creator)
Wait. Now before we talk about the critical response to the show and the actual value of the art in question and how people responded to that. I do think now is a great time to have a conversation about money. Which brings us to the producer statement which was reported in Deadline by Greg Evans under the headline Broadway's the Queen of Versailles to close even earlier than expected due to harsh economic realities. And the quote is, unfortunately, the harsh economic realities of new Broadway musicals in a post Covid landscape have caught up with us. The industry as a whole is no longer seeing the audience behaviors we've relied on to shape our strategies for decades. This has led us to the painful decision to move our closing earlier to Sunday, December 21st. It sounds like what that's alluding to is shifting audience ticket buying behaviour in terms of not buying as far in in advance, which is something that we've definitely seen in the post Covid landscape. When they talk about the harsh economic realities of new Broadway musicals in a post Covid landscape, everything has become way more expensive than it used to be and fewer shows, certainly fewer new musicals as a result are recouping. A staggeringly small number of new musicals have actually been able to earn their money back and recoup their initial investments since the shutdown, notably not on that list. Death becomes her, maybe happy ending. The Outsiders none of these have recalled cooped yet and the Queen of Versailles is believed to have been capitalized at a reported $22.5 million. Greg Evans here calls it just the latest in a string of post Covid Broadway musical financial flops, and certainly it will be among this season's largest investment losses. There is then some conversation about the show's grosses, but we're going to take an even more in depth look at that and look at the entire history of the grosses throughout its Broadway run to analyze trends. Beginning with its earliest reported grosses on the week ending October 12, with an average ticket price of $131, a top ticket at $259 and 100% capacity, it was selling out and it was still in previews, so tickets might be a little bit cheaper. The average ticket price fell just a little bit the next week, with the capacity down to 91 but still grossing $898,000. That gross went up to $962,000 with 88% capacity. Average ticket price of $110. By the week ending October 26th, we move into November. The average ticket price price is down the better part of $10. The capacity is down to 77. The overall gross is down to 828,000. This also would have been impacted by comps for press performances, free tickets given out to people to review weekending November 9th. By this point the show has opened, the reviews have been published and there seems to have been a boost. We are up to 95% capacity again. The show for the first time grosses over $1 million in a week week. Just though the average ticket price is down to $87, the top ticket is up to $299, which is the highest that it has reached throughout its Broadway run. What does this tell us? This tells us that more people are buying those expensive tickets, even though the average ticket price is falling. It does climb though, even if capacity doesn't. The next week we're down to 90% capacity. Average ticket price $111. Top tickets still at 299, once again grossing over a million dollars. That would be the final week week in which that would happen because as we approach late November, the grosses then dramatically begin to fall. So does the capacity. We go from one week from $877,000 average ticket $97.86% capacity to the next week grossing $697,085. Average ticket down to 77 down to 73% capacity by the week ending December 7th. Average tickets sitting around the same place place at $90. Very similar overall grosses, but certainly far less than a very expensive new Broadway musical needs to be making just to keep up with its weekly running costs, let alone the 20 something million dollar capitalization that it was never going to make back, if only because it would have had to have run in excess of a year, I think. And who else was going to play this after Kristin Chenoweth and Commander Box Office? And don't tell me Sherry Renee Scott. Now listen, I love Sherry Renee Scott. I actually contemplated, especially when she got a few more performances over the last week, flying to New York simply to see her perform in this show that I do not like very much and then getting on a plane and going straight home again. I did not have the time because I've been seeing shows every single day this week and that's the only reason that I did not further that thought process. However, I have a bone to pick with the people of New York City because back when we were first talking about the Chenoweth controversy, everyone was saying, well, now I'll only go see the Queen of Versailles when Sherri Renee Scott is in in and her first performance rolled around and I was desperately jealous of everyone in New York who was getting to go see it. And you were all posting on your Instagram stories and my friends were telling me how great and campy and ironic she was and how the whole show played differently, perhaps even better because she brought a very different quality to Jackie and was maybe even a little better suited to the character and the real human being's characteristics than Kristen herself. And I was here thinking, I don't care that nice thing happened to you, it should have happened to me instead, like the jellyfish FOMO experiencing person that I was. And yet, and I'm very sorry to say this because it's far Less than she deserves as a bonafide Broadway star who originated roles in the last five years in Aida, in the Little Mermaid, in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Those performances weren't selling. Pause, take it in, stop commenting beneath everything that Sherry should just take over and save the show. The show would have run much longer. Those shows weren't selling, selling. She only had a couple of confirmed, I think three confirmed performances this side of the new year. A couple more were added at the last minute. A lot of people, I, I think I know a large percentage of the people who went and paid for tickets and didn't get last minute comps and papering to fill out the upper sections because in the days leading up to Sherry's performances, devastatingly and disappointingly, they weren't selling. And I think that was affected by some of the issues around the show not selling whatsoever. But it certainly also must be acknowledged that a big part of why the show was selling at all was still Kristin Chenoweth. Even in the face of all of this criticism, she was still selling tickets. And we can see that by comparison now, considering all of these numbers, they're not wrong when they talk about the challenging financial landscape. And you know, this is the immediate truthful answer about why the show is closing. But also that's only happening because people aren't buying tickets. And a lot of people will suggest that it's because ticket prices are too high and people can't afford to go and see this show. And I wonder whether, because as we just saw with those trends in tickets, with the ticket average price dropping, but the top price ticket moving up, would the people who would be more likely to go and see the show if tickets were more affordable actually want to go see this show in the first place? Are they waiting to get more affordable tickets to go see something down to earth and relatable like two strangers carry a cat cake across New York that tells you an honest story about how expensive it is to exist in Manhattan. No, I think the queen of the psy has always been a show that has hoped to court a wealthy audience. The ones who can afford to pay for those premium tickets and offset the price of lower ones, even if none of them are really as low as we might like them to be in, like I said, an increasingly challenging Broadway climate. And Kristin Chenoweth, who is also a producer on the show as well as its star, has spoken about this in an interview. She said that she was feeling torn between knowing that like a family coming from Oklahoma wouldn't be able to afford to go and see this show at a hotel and dinner in New York, that it was becoming impossibly expensive. But also looking at it all as a producer and knowing that they needed to charge the ticket prices that they needed to. If shows like the Outsiders and maybe Happy Ending are selling really well and still not recouping, then there is a much bigger economic problem and you start to understand why ticket prices, from a producer's perspective, need to be as high as they are. So while it is true that the Queen of Versailles began to hemorrhage money on Broadway and that's why they set a closing date in January and then brought it even sooner, we still have to dig into why exactly that was and why it was that nobody wanted to buy tickets. Before we do. The timing around the January closing date and then the December one is interesting and notable because early January closures are incredibly common. I've said this before, some of the best weeks for Broadway are those holiday weeks. At the end of December, a lot of people are going to New York. A lot of people are going to see Broadway shows. People have time off from work, people are traveling, they're on vacation, they are giving each other gifts, they're going out to celebrate. They go and see a Broadway show. You see this reflected in the holiday schedules of so many of these shows. Doing so many performances in a week, it's kind of dreadful for the performers, honestly. But then, hey, at least they're not losing their jobs at very short notice before one of the most expensive times of the year. Which, ironically, is also something that is depicted within the Queen of Versailles. It would be funny if it wasn't quite so painful for the actual human beings involved here who, since I didn't mention it at the start of this video, and I apologize for that, unreservedly, have nothing but my most sincere sympathies during what I'm sure has been for some time an incredibly challenging professional period. And I don't mean that in criticism of the show that they're doing. I mean that because of everything that they have had to endure a company outside of it. While it may be fun for us to all eat popcorn and watch a storm brewing around a Broadway theater, it can't be easy to live in the eye of that storm and go to work every day. But anyway, end of December, great time for Broadway. January, horrible time. And this is sort of true everywhere because we're out celebrating and it's Christmas and it's New Year's, all of that is happening as soon as January rolls around, then it's called for no fun, festive reason. The weather is still terrible, but also nobody has any money anymore and everyone wants to stay inside. People aren't. I mean, a few people are like finding a good opportunity to go and travel to New York because everything's cheaper. But for the most part, shows are not going to sell as well in January. So you see a lot of shows staying open through the first week of the new year and then closing, which was initially the Queen of Versailles plan. However, bringing that closing forward to December 21st does seem to indicate that they have simply run out of money and there could be other factors at play here. Kristin Chenoweth, the leading lady who we said is selling a lot of tickets personally, recently had an injury that forced her to step away from a couple of performances before returning with a modified costume. There's every possibility she would have needed a little more time away from the show and that was going to impact it even more. With everything that was happening, you know, you can't blame them for just wanting to shut the whole thing down a little bit sooner had she needed to step away from it entirely in a very dramatic final twist and had Shea Renee Scott taken over, I don't know with ticket sales that they really would have been able to make it through the new year. Although it would have become much harder for me to convince myself not to fly over there, I will say that. And again, not even for a show I liked. Which brings us to what we have to talk about next. Why weren't audience members going to see this show? Was it because.
- [27:55]
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- [28:15]
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Mickey Jo (Theatre Critic and Content Creator)
Of the reviews. Now whenever we talk about why a show is closing prematurely, we often talk about the reviews. And with the Queen of Versailles, it's an interesting one because the overall skew of critical consensuses consensuses consensi. I've never had to pluralize that word before. The opinions that people came out with the verdicts, dare we say, ended up being a little bit more mixed than people had perhaps been anticipating. And by people, I mean me with According to The Aggregate Generator didtheylikeit.com Three positive reviews, eight mixed reviews and only six negative reviews, including a controversial critics pick from the New York Times who have, and not a moment too soon, finally appointed a new chief theatre critic about whom I am incredibly optimistic. And though the likes of Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post criticized the show openly, saying Kristin Chenoweth returns to Broadway way in a dire musical that needs a wrecking ball with a one star review, that New York Times critics pick probably gave it a little bit more buoyancy than perhaps anyone involved was expecting. And we did see a little bit of an uptick in sales for the first couple of weeks that followed. So it doesn't necessarily feel like a case of bad reviews that immediately changed the prospects of a show. Now, I spoke before about Adina and there's an interesting parallel with her having appeared on Broadway this year as well in perhaps another misguided star vehicle. Her show was called Redwood. That was a about trees. And the real catalyst for the early closure of that show was the announcement of the Tony nominations and the revelation that the show did not get any. The Queen of Versailles did not make it to Tony nominations. Not even close. It did not make it through the even like the next couple of big new musical openings, although admittedly they would have had to have waited a very long time because there are so few this season. And in all of this, you know, one person's downfall is another's gain. It is probably a pretty good time to be the plucky new musical 2 Stranger Carry a Cake across New York, which now finds itself with considerably little Best New Musical Tony Award competition. But also, dare I say, the New York Times verdict may not carry the same weight that it used to. And from my perspective, more and more audience members are turning to new critical voices and different places to gain real trusted word of mouth feedback from theatre goers whose opinions they value. I say that not just because the Broadway reviews that I create here are some of them most watched and listened to content that I have shared, but also because we are seeing communities developing on message boards, on Reddit, places like Showscore. People are really turning to each other in the theatre community to trust Each other's feedback. With ticket prices only becoming more expensive, it's becoming more important. The theatre goers know if something is really worth their time. People can't necessarily afford to see everything in the way that they used to. And if I know New Yorkers, disregarding for a moment the audiences who would have visited from out of town, a lot of these people are staunch individuals with steadfast values. And I do think we can't forget the political element of all of this. Not just about Kristin Chenoweth's comments. I think less even about Kristin Chenoweth's comments than the framing of Jackie Siegel in the whole thing. And there was a similar reluctance to go and see the Broadway musical Tammy Faye from people who had complicated relationships to religion and to her religious history and the whole televangelist movement that she was a big part of in its heyday. And I think people, in each instance would have been more encouraged to buy a ticket if they, prior to seeing the show, could be reassured that it had a perspective on the individual being depicted that they could understand, that they might agree with. But this notion within the marketing of just being like, here's Tammy Faye, she's on Broadway. You have to come to the show to find out whether we're going to say if she's a good person or not. Not. Or acknowledge all of the controversy perhaps is a little bit similar to what has happened with the Queen of Versailles, where it's just like, look at Kristen looking glam as Jackie Siegel. Isn't Jackie funny? She's got a big cup of drink and she's got a dog. Isn't this all wacky? She was trying to build a crazy house. What's going on? Because, and here's the problem, it's not a fictional story. People already know who this woman was, who this woman continues to be, who she is politically supporting with this vast wealth. And for a lot of people, that would have been reason enough to stay away, regardless of every other issue that we have talked about. Ultimately, I am also of the opinion that audiences will always crave a great story and great songs. And this is a show which has neither. And one way or another, people are going to start finding that out. People listen to each other on the street in rush lines. People talk about it with servers, late night in Manhattan at bars. People talk about these shows, shows. And word travels fast, particularly when something. How did we put it earlier? Needs work. If there is one thing people want to talk about more than the best new show in town, it is the worst new show in town. And while I can sit here and overanalyze every other detail and talk about the finances and talk about the political context in this moment in history, ultimately, and while I do think that the community needs to inherently still find a way to be supportive and nurture artists and all of that good stuff, there is still the undeniable strong possibility that when you bring a flawed, disappointing show to Broadway, it will fail not just to connect with audiences, but to even exist for more than a short period of time. So those, in conclusion, are a handful of the reasons, and there may even be more. There may be undiscovered elements to do with investors and things, things they're happening behind the scenes financially, there may be more at play than we are empowered here to realize. But those are the factors which we need to acknowledge when talking about the now earlier closing of the Queen of Versailles on Broadway. And when you spell it out, plain and simple, the whole thing does start to look like something of a recipe for disaster. A story which doesn't resonate with audiences arriving at the wrong political moment, a leading lady who has gone from a beloved, beloved star to a figure of controversy, material that doesn't so much leave audiences humming the songs as they leave the theater as waiting until they're a sufficient number of blocks away to start talking about how disappointed they were. And as a result of all of the above, a show which is not making nearly enough money at a time when shows like it are costing more than ever before. And so the show's closure is looming on December 21st. Once again, my most extraordinary and heartfelt sympathies are with not only the company, but also the crew, everyone working inside and beyond the St. James, the attached to this show whose livelihoods will be affected by this closure. These are real people trying to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world, in an industry which even this year is facing newfound challenges. And you may ask, what is the future for a show like the Queen of Versailles? I do believe that there is some technicality within licensing that means the show hasn't necessarily played for long enough on Broadway to be licensed by the producers, and the rights are perhaps retained by the writers. I don't know that this is necessarily going to feel like a passion project that has to be developed by anyone attached to it, especially without Kristin Chenoweth's ongoing involvement. When we tend to see failed star vehicles like this, we don't often see them again, even like successful star vehicles aren't that frequently produced without their original stars. Sometimes they are sometimes, sometimes, you know, long running hits like Chicago become something separate to their original leading ladies. I don't know if we can see that for the Queen of Versailles or in 2057, the Mini A Chocolate Factory produces a version in London that people are calling a huge critical success that finally fixes all of the show's problems. And just maybe we live in a kind and understanding enough society that the kind of behavior being depicted in that era of politics, politics feels more like a hilarious relic from the past than something which is troublingly close to a headline that you just read on your phone. A closing thought then. Let us continue as theatre fans to support and celebrate and uplift new musical theatre writing, especially in these troubling times. And let us simultaneously hope that the rest of it is better than this. Thank you so much for listening to my thoughts about the early closure of the Queen of Versailles on Broadway. I have been Mickey Jo if you've enjoyed listening to these, make sure you to subscribe here on YouTube or go follow me on podcast platforms. Share all of your thoughts and insights in the comment section down below. Remember to keep it friendly. I have no problem deleting your comments if you decide to be rude. And for those of you who aren't, I hope that you are staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
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