By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The fashion doyennes at the heart of the musical “War Paint” don’t make it easy for the photographer angling for a feature image.
When they do share the stage, they stay each to one side, only teasing now and then as they edge, usually in full voice toward the middle. Or there’s a screen keeping them apart even as they eavesdrop on the other. It’s not until the end that they interact in a scene.
“War Paint” with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, is a dramatic rendering of the true story of cosmetic icons Helena Rubenstein (Annelise Clifton) and Elizabeth Arden (Cyndy Brookover).
The musical, directed by Matt Zwyer, opens in the Black Swamp Players’ theater on Oak Street in downtown Bowling Green, Friday, March 15. The show continues Saturday, March 16, and Sunday, March 17 at 2 p.m. and next weekend March 22 and 23 at 8 p.m., and March 24 at 2 p.m. Click for tickets.
Rubenstein and Arden were indeed bitter rivals, and the details of their rivalry ring true. They never mention each other by name. They steal each other’s trade secrets. They poach former employees, including an ex-husband.
This is to fashion what “The Crown” is to the British Royal family, engaging in some serious dishing of the dirt.
Zwyer packs the sprawling story that spans several decades onto the Oak Street stage. The scenery is minimal. The small venue can be problematic in terms of balance between the voices and instrumental accompaniment. The trio of two keyboards played by Teresa Blowers, the show’s accompanist, and Durrell Johnson, and percussionist Brandon Benson’s walks the line with care. Benson delicate, yet vivid, drum work is especially notable.
This all helps to keep the focus on the out-sized personalities of these queens of cosmetics.
Rubenstein and Arden are far more alike than they care to admit. They are driven. Businesswomen at a time when a woman’s place was in the home, and she was expected to be dolled up to please her man. That’s expressed in the opening chorus number “Best Face Forward,” which is reprised when the action shifts ahead a couple decades.
These pioneers built their cosmetic empires on these gender expectations, and they are proud they subverted them by becoming women on top of their own companies and an industry they created. In “If I’d Been a Man,” they sing of the hurdles they faced.
That causes clashes with the men closest to them. Both Tommy Lewis (Lane Hakel), Arden’s husband as well as business associate, and Harry Fleming (Warren Clifton), Rubenstein’s marketing head, resist being toadies even as their employers resist giving them full credit for their roles in building their respective empires.
Harry breaks first when Rubenstein mocks his homosexuality. When he arrives at Arden’s door that creates a clash because she offers him the title Lewis craves. Angry, he storms out, and shows up at the Arden flagship shop in New York, and invites the saleswomen to go out on the town. They tease Lewis by calling him “Mr. Arden.”
The couple divorces and he joins forces with Rubenstein, promising to help her cripple his former wife’s enterprise. No, his new boss says, a wounded enemy is more dangerous. They will annihilate Arden.
Rubenstein and Arden are so focused on each other that they ignore the challenges of a changing market. The upstart Charles Revson (Nick Yates) represents the future they are unprepared for. He offers to partner with them on his new line of nail polish. They are uninterested.
Revson has none of their social affectations. He’s brash, uncouth. Yates shows up like a bolt of comedy. He’s the future of the business.
In “Better Yourself,” Arden even counsels Revson’s partner Dorian Leigh (Rebecca Williams) to leave him, follow her lead, and become more sophisticated.
Rubenstein and Arden aspire to being social royalty, though they are barred from those ranks because Helena is a Jew and Arden is a farm girl from Ontario, a bounder.
Clifton captures the ruthless elegance of Rubenstein who grew up poor in the streets of Krakow. While Brookover’s Arden still is marked by the hard scrabble life on the plains that shaped her desire never to return. Yet she wishes to see her signature pink decorating a nursery.
They are surrounded by a cast – Deb Shaffer, Beth Parker, Emily Harel, Joyce Coutinho, Allison Fox, Michael Richardson, Mason Melia, and Skylar Rae Tauber – capable of assuming multiple parts. They create the world that Rubenstein and Arden try to float above.
In the end, they are both being honored by their industry, but they realize they can never share the same stage.
This last encounter is fabricated by the playwrights. It’s a wise choice that resolves the audience’s desire to see these to antagonists whose battles have entertained them finally meet face to face. And it allows the photographer to finally get his shot.
