Saw it with Sherie.
The show is fine. Far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen on Broadway, but not enough of a trainwreck creatively to make it one for the history books.
Sherie gives a very good performance as Jackie but her voice is not strong and is not a good fit for this part. I cannot compare her performance to Kristin’s, but there are a lot of Kristin-isms in the vocal writing.
Schwartz’s score is pretty bad, and it is not helped by John Clancy’s poor orchestrations. Past Schwartz scores have been orchestrated by some of the best to ever do it (Ralph Burns, Don Walker, Bill Brohn, and David Cullen among them) and Clancy is not in their company.
Tonally the show is all over the place. It has a phoney earnestness when maybe it SHOULD lean into the cynicism. At times it feels like it wants to do a Scorsese-style Goodfellas/Wolf of Wall Street thing, but they don’t follow it through. The two different framing devices (real-life Versailles + the documentary) are not good. Trying to span 20+ years also doesn’t work.
Everything feels a little overblown and not enough fun, and as with BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, this does not feel like a show that needed an ensemble.
Updated On: 12/7/25 at 09:42 PM