War Paint

It is less and less true that "A man can be an absent parent/stray the way a woman daren't," but the lyrics of Broadway's most superficial concoction, "War Paint," starring Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole as Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, beauty's first moguls and fiercest rivals, remind us of the costs women -- and men -- pay for success. It's lonely at the shop.

This is the first play I've written about where I had the inside scoop. So far I've never received a husband home from war then murdered him and his mistress on the spot, and I can't speak to Aeschylus' sources. But I do know what women go through regarding their beauty. And conflicting priorities. And ambition.

After (full disclosure) nine years in the beauty business as Trish McEvoy's writer, as a woman with a mirror and a working mother of two, I credit the "War Paint" team for getting inside the skin of women's beauty tragicomedy.

Like most beauty awakenings, the play opens on an insecure note. Writers Doug Wright (book) and Michael Korie (lyrics), explore what Arden and Rubinstein saw and sold: women yearn to know what to do about their beauty issues. And we can feel genuine fear of the aging process: The opening number brays, "Are beauty queens in magazines the standard ev'ry woman must embrace? It's terrifying, face it! Face it! Face it! What's a woman to do, to put her best face forward?"

These are sensitive insights from the male authors whose work was inspired by Lindy Woodhead's book of the same name and the documentary film "The Powder and the Glory." Wright is also the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner for "I Am My Own Wife," the unforgettable one-tran show about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.

For Charlotte, he got Jefferson Mays, and for Rubinstein, Patti LuPone with a Polish accent, in a role she seems made for in both stature and spirit. Towering and blonde, Ebersole is Arden, the Canadian Episcopalian who created an industry but couldn't get into New York's most exclusive club; being a self-made working gal was not bragging rights, then.

Hilarity and poignancy interweave in Director Michael Greif's beautifully staged production, making not only for a worthwhile night of theatre, but an accurate reflection of women's relationship to beauty, at once fantasy and farce.

Spanning 1935-64, it takes us on a "beauty history tour" from pre-label days -- can you imagine buying an unmarked product today--to the wartime creation of a "lipstick economy" in which both companies found ways to stay afloat while supporting the U.S. and the Women's Army Corps.

The play treads deeper waters regarding the heroines' family strains: Arden's choices regarding her dissatisfied husband's behind-the-scenes role in her company, and Rubinstein's pain-disguised-as-disappointment-in her oft-mentioned estranged sons.

It is less successful in inventing meetings or near-brushes between the two powerhouses, who in reality were never known to have met. I would buy anything Lupone-Rubinstein and Ebersole-Arden had to sell except sentimentality. But I understand why the creators wanted to put a bow on their package, and it was sweet to see reconciled in fiction what real-life pride would be unlikely to allow.

John Dossett as Arden's husband and Douglas Sills as Rubinstein's right hand, like the roles they played, stood out just the right amount--bringing humor and complexity to the conversation without interfering with the real showdown. Regarding LuPone and Ebersole, they were the sum greater than their parts.

It was a privilege to see them originating these roles at the peak of their powers. Ebersole wore the weight of Arden's social and personal disappointment on her face, and it read to the last seat in the theater. LuPone became Rubinstein. Barking orders, stroking her jewels like a cat, bemoaning her complex condition -- all in a credible Polish accent -- then belting the tunes from a place deep within.

Early in the action, Arden says to her team, "Remember, girls! Every woman has a God-given right to loveliness!" Personally I might not subscribe to the religious part of the phrase but I certainly do to the judicial one. The world may jest about beauty, and we all watch it erode, but name a woman in your life who hasn't had a meltdown over her skin, features, hair. Is society to blame or rather a natural desire for beauty and the struggle between -- in Serenity Prayer terms -- accepting the things one cannot change and changing the things one can.

This is where Rubinstein's oft quoted, "There are no such things as ugly women, only lazy ones," is particularly apt. And it is a perfect first principle to distinguish her from Arden, whose brand hewed closer to conventional beauty.

Rubinstein believed in creating it:

HELENA: It is funny, yes? A short woman with Slavic nose, she becomes an expert in the world of beauty?

HARRY: Nonsense, Madame. You're very attractive.

HELENA: It's force of will, Harry. Every morning I tell the mirror I am beautiful, and then I dare it to defy me.

In the song "Better Yourself" Arden instructs a young woman in the art of self-improvement then concludes in self-doubt with a clever play on words: "Of course, I've met her myself. That young go-getter: myself. And maybe better myself before I "bettered" myself... (Looking around) with all this... style." Did she cultivate a better self or was she once better as her original self -- without the toll success and artifice can take.

The writers are cutting to the quick of women's quest for beauty and success. What is the relationship between appearances and a better life? Indisputable on the one hand, disheartening on the other. Is the solution to care more... or care less? As in most things the answer hangs in the balance.

Determining what beauty, success, family mean to you and prioritizing accordingly is women's Sisyphean task today. The stakes are high. Mishandle one piece of your pie and no matter how much you achieve, you could end up like Arden -- disappointed in pink.

"War Paint" runs through September 3 at the Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, NY, 11217. For information or tickets, call 212-921-8000 or visit www.warpaintmusical.com

Cassandra Csencsitz is a New York-based arts and beauty writer. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Kalamazoo College and Master of Arts from St. John's College's Great Books Program. Cassandra met her husband in Greece on the University of Detroit Mercy's Classical Theatre Program and they are now the bemused parents of two. Cassandra is the Communications Director for Trish McEvoy Beauty.

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