Review: 'War Paint' Doesn't Have Enough Fight

"War Paint," a new Broadway musical about the rivalry between real-life makeup industry doyennes Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein, has a strange problem. It's too fair.

You can almost hear someone backstage doling out goodies: one song for you, Elizabeth Arden. Now one for you, Helena Rubenstein. Was there a scene about how Arden dominated her husband, who seems to be her second-in-command (John Dossett)? Then there's one about how Rubenstein dominated her own second in command, Harry Fleming (a dapper Douglas Sills).

These were strong, sometimes tyrannical women who created the beauty industry. Before them, makeup was worn only by actresses or prostitutes, not respectable women. But they turned that around and in the process, each became a self-made millionaire and created her own empire on Fifth Avenue. 

Clearly, they lead interesting lives.

But you'd never know it, despite commanding performances from two lions of musical theater, Patti LuPone as the scrappy, Jewish immigrant Rubenstein, and Christine Ebersole as the elegant Arden, who aspires to join the Mayflower Club (she's refused, because she's a bit nouveu riche). The musical insists that all they want is to belong to the Fifth Avenue set (and maybe have better sales than the other). Those stakes seem rather...low, at least as they're portrayed here.

The trouble is that the women never met in real life, so their stories are told in parallel. We learn a lot of facts about their histories and businesses, but not a lot about what motivates them. On stage, they only speak together once, at the end, in a scene created by the playwright. It has the snap much of the rest of the show lacks.

Still, there's a lot that's scrumptious, like Catherine Zuber's eye-candy costumes, and it's a pleasure to see parade after parade of women in the 1930s through 1960s wearing society's best. But "War Paint" could have done with a little less panache — and a lot more plot. 

War Paint

Book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie; directed by Michael Greif

At the Nederlander Theatre; open run