War Paint Scribe Doug Wright's Love Letter to Stars Patti LuPone, Christine Ebersole & More

War Paint, which charts the rise and rivalry of cosmetics titans Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, will play its final performance on November 5. Starring two-time Tony winners Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, the musical features a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, a book by Doug Wright and direction by Michael Greif. Wright, who won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for his play I Am My Own Wife, previously collaborated with Frankel, Korie, Greif and Ebersole on Grey Gardens, for which he garnered a Tony nomination. As the countdown to War Paint’s last bow on Broadway gets closer, Wright penned this tribute to the stars, company and producers. Beware the tears this valentine may produce, War Paint fans—your mascara will run!

***
Patti LuPone had just heard the entire score to War Paint and all of her character’s music in particular. Scott Frankel, Michael Korie and I sat in rapt silence, eager to hear her response.

“Boys,” she began, “I’m older now than when we did Evita. You know that, and you’ve thought to yourselves, ‘Maybe she doesn’t still have all those big notes. And if she does, maybe she can’t hold them like she used to.’ So, you’ve been delicate with me. Well,” she continued with a lilt of mischief in her voice, “I still got the notes, I can still hold the notes, so give me more of those big, big notes.”

Unfettered and fearless now, Scott and Michael went back to the piano, and did just that. And she’s been belting those beautiful notes—in a voice that’s at its fullest richest and most heart-stopping yet—eight times a week ever since.

Christine Ebersole had mastered the qualities mandated by her role as Elizabeth Arden in the show during rehearsal: Arden’s immaculate etiquette, her well-groomed charm and her love of all things perceived as feminine. To me, Christine’s performance was rapidly approaching flawless. Then during our dress rehearsals she got her 1950s wig for the middle of the second act. It was a conservative flip, blonde and shellacked. When Christine wore it for the first time, there was a seismic shift in her demeanor: the older, more vulnerable Arden had grit in her voice, an impatience born of fear and a cutting humor she could wield like a weapon.

In that moment, Christine’s indelible characterization grew even deeper, and we saw the steel core beneath the Chanel suit. She was Billie Burke and Gena Rowlands, all rolled into one.

Musicals are not easy. When we worked together on Hands on a Hardbody, composer Trey Anastasio quipped that they were “like trying to parallel park a cruise ship.” And Paul Rudnick once famously said that they were akin to waging war in a small, far-off country. Both were right. They take years and excise a piece of your heart along the way. Under the best circumstances, they’re arduous ordeals and when you add not one but two powerhouse Broadway stars, the results can be downright enervating.

War Paint was anything but. Under the watchful tutelage of producers David Stone and Marc Platt, the show was a joy from its first workshop and will continue to be one through its closing performance, this Sunday’s matinee. The show boasts a supporting cast gifted enough to share the stage with our two beloved legends, and the spirit in the dressing rooms has been one of boundless good-humor and passionate commitment to the material. (Can I admit it in print? I have hopeless showbiz crushes on our leading men John Dossett and Doug Sills.) We will miss War Paint madly. But our wistfulness is mitigated by relief that our heroic Patti—who has been battling an ailing hip for weeks with brio and determination, never letting it mar her performance—will receive her very necessary surgery. 

And long after it has closed, authors, producers, creatives and company alike will smile at the memory of our two leading ladies, doing gleeful battle in the show’s final scene. Together, they’re a masterful comic duo, setting up and delivering dueling bon mots like tennis pros, even mining honest laughs from pauses and empty air. They’re having one hell of a time, and so—deliriously—do we. It may be a book scene (in a show loaded with soaring tunes) but in their hands, they make it music.