Theater review: Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole take on the women who built the cosmetics industry in ‘War Paint’

CHICAGO – The battlefield is Fifth Avenue. The upturned faces that launch the competing gunships belong to American women, beholden to the pursuit of beauty yet unsure whether the application of hormones or the perfect shade of pink provides the best defense against the inevitable ravages of time. And the Homeric war lasts for decades. Incredibly, the application of cosmetics to the female visage outlasts a European conflict that demands the same raw materials as makeup and, both improbably and paradoxically, a feminist revolution.

But “War Paint,” the intriguingly juicy and glamorous, if overly binary and yet underwritten, new musical at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago (through Aug. 21) under the fluid direction of Michael Greif, really is all about the major generals. Unveiling a new and stylistically diverse score by composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, the formidably intimidating Patti LuPone plays Helena Rubinstein while Christine Ebersole, a genteel actress and vocalist of singular elegance, essays Elizabeth Arden.

Thus the semiotics of a pair of competing divas is playfully exemplified by star-casting of a wattage far outpowering the typical new musical at a nonprofit theater in Chicago.

In this musical telling, partly based on a dual biography by Lindy Woodhead and a documentary film aptly titled “The Powder & the Glory,” Rubinstein is a self-styled, pseudo-scientific Slavic titan from the old world of hocus-pocus. Her determination is relentless, and her withering wit, book writer Doug Wright points out many times over, is as pointed as her nails. Arden, meanwhile, is the child of an Ontario farmer who sells herself as a prototypical Anna Wintour. But she’s actually a savvy entrepreneur who realizes that packaging always trumps a nebulous product and whose slavish devotion to the color pink provides a crucial chromatic code to unlocking the door of every woman’s childhood.

The show – which contains so much music it almost feels through-composed – is energized by the fervent rivalry of the women. In real life and in the show, each refuses to utter the name of the other, let alone meet in person, until their empires finally begin to crumble, thanks in no small measure to Charles Revson – the co-founder of Revlon, the Trojan horse of the cheap corner drugstore. The well-acted subplot involves their mutinous brigadier generals, Tommy Lewis (John Dossett) and Harry Fleming (Douglas Sills), each of whom struggles with working for a woman and each of whom switches sides, as (unbelievably) they did in real life. In the case of Tommy, this is especially complex, as he is also married to Elizabeth Arden. The woman, not the brand.

Since the source is a dual biography, and the musical has twin protagonists of equal weight, this leads the show down a tempting, but ultimately problematic, path of parallelism. Part of a song often features Arden and/or her acolytes complaining about Rubinstein, immediately followed by a reverse moment set in the opposing camp. Certainly, the structure of a musical that is partly about the perils of oligarchy – “War Paint” is saying that your chief rival ultimately may not be who you think she is – demands some charting of that bifurcated course. This is a show that can stand two 11 o’clock numbers. Indeed, its public will demand them.

But too much equal time also can become predictable, especially, in this case, since there is a lack of book scenes and the kind of contrasting humor they can bring. Far stronger are the solo musical turns, most especially “Pink,” a complex homage to the joys and limitations thereof, as richly colored by Ebersole, and “Now You Know,” the moment when Rubinstein finally lets down her guard and thus LuPone does the same. The rivalry in real life was surely jagged and unpredictable; yet it is manifested in this show as overly neat.

In some ways, this is a business musical, in that it is the story of two female CEOs battling for supremacy even as they invented an industry; David Korins’ set prominently features the two famous logos, sometimes floating over the characters who encapsulate the brands. That carries the show only so far, though, especially since we don’t see that much of the sheer joy of running a powerful business. Nor do we see that much of the all-important consumers of cosmetics, beyond the unfortunate yet pliant souls headed through the Red Door of Arden’s Salon, willing to have electric volts applied to their face.

The show has a small, all-female ensemble that is, as yet, underused, although it is beautifully costumed by Catherine Zuber and there is formidable talent therein. The choreography by Christopher Gattelli is appealing, yet limited in scope. There are hints of deeper exploration of the fascinating question of whether or not these two women tried to hold women back even as they blazed a trail as CEOs, but the show keeps returning to the personal vendettas, long after it has been established that neither woman much liked the other. There has to be more reason to go into battle.

For the Goodman audience Saturday night, of course, the pleasures of seeing and hearing Ebersole and LuPone, even with the unstinting latter hidden behind a thick accent, were understandably considerable. Frankel’s score and Korie’s dry, unstinting lyrics represent an ambitious composition that embraces melancholy and truly borders on the operatic – it’s a weighty and complex suite of writing that mostly needs more interwoven scenes.

Rubinstein and Arden are fascinating trailblazers. Not only is this an inherently interesting story, but the show has some delicious bons mots. Not the least of them is delivered by LuPone’s Rubinstein as she contemplates a ruby-red and indisputably phallic piece of lipstick, popping up out of its case: “There are no ugly women,” she says, growling slightly to fit the moment, “only lazy ones.”