Cosmetics queens battle, make up in ‘War Paint’
The Washington Post
How do you write a musical about the intense, bitter, lifelong struggle between two celebrated New York business titans — who never met?
Drama thrives on conflict, but that usually requires the characters to be, at least at some point, in the same room. For although their corporate headquarters were a few blocks apart in Manhattan, Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, powerful chief executives of the dueling cosmetics empires that bore their names, managed to stay out of each other’s physical way for the huge chunk of the 20th century during which they held sway, impressively, over their industry.
Weaving together their stories was one of the extraordinary challenges the creators of the new Broadway musical “War Paint” gave themselves, as they attempted to construct a complex show, based largely on an exhaustive 2003 biography by British historian Lindy Woodhead, about a pair of self-made female entrepreneurs navigating a man’s world. The women were also the subject of a 2007 documentary, “The Powder and the Glory,” the rights to which the musical’s producer, David Stone, also obtained.
Mindful of the pitfalls — among them, the danger of turning a nuanced business story into that most tired and demeaning of female cliches, a “catfight” — the team of composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie and book writer Doug Wright set about building a narrative through which theatergoers could commune with strong women going where few women had gone before.
It was not lost on them, either, that as they whipped “War Paint” into shape for its first production last summer at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, there was the distinct possibility that the nation soon would be electing its first female president. Although that was not to be, they remained persuaded that the musical could have important things to say, not only about an industry built for women, but also about how Americans view women who take on traditionally masculine roles.
“Any time you’re writing about historical figures, an audience expects to see beautifully etched portraits,” says Mr. Wright, who wrote the musical “Grey Gardens” with Mr. Frankel and Mr. Korie and won a Pulitzer Prize for “I Am My Own Wife.” “But if the play is working, that portrait turns into a mirror, and the audience sees themselves.”
Mr. Stone, who, among other Broadway hits, produced “Wicked” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Next to Normal,” says he took the “War Paint” idea to the “Grey Gardens” team, in part, because he was “bored with stories about men” and was interested in finding roles for actresses of the stature of Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole — the latter came into the project before the Chicago run because Donna Murphy had to bow out for personal reasons.
Ms. LuPone was intrigued from the very start, Mr. Stone reports. “No one has ever written a show for me,” she told Mr. Stone after he offered her the role. “So the answer is yes.”
Ms.Woodhead, a onetime London fashion publicist, says the dramatic possibilities of “War Paint” were apparent to her even during her four years of research. “To me it was quite operatic,” she says of the biography, adding that, in her mind, “I heard applause as I wrote the book.”
For the stage, however, staying 100 percent faithful to history wouldn’t do. Rubinstein and Arden may not have met on Park Avenue, but they had to meet on Broadway.
So in their impeccably styled embodiments of beauty-industry royalty, Ms. LuPone and Ms. Ebersole do exchange words — and at the curtain call, take their bows together. In the process, says the musical’s director, Michael Greif, the actresses help to dispel yet another cliche.
“They very cogently debunk the myth that two extraordinarily talented women could not share the stage,” he says. “They both understand that sharing makes for greater work.”