This week THEATER TALK welcomes Broadway grande dames Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, currently starring in War Paint, the new Broadway musical in which they portray legendary Twentieth Century cosmetic PIONEERS Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden. Joining them is the show's director, Michael Greif (who also directed another Broadway musical hit this season, Dear Evan Hansen).
Although Rubinstein and Arden were rivals, LuPone and Ebersole (each 2-time Tony Award-winners) are anything but; their admiration for each other is clear, and their enjoyment of each other is infectious. A fascinating insight from their director Greif is how differently they work as actresses and yet how they have achieved onstage chemistry to further enrich the show since it premiered last year at the
Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
THEATER TALK co-hosts
Michael Riedel of the New York Post and producer
Susan Haskins inquire about the process of creating the show out-of-town. Greif says it was enormously valuable in terms of streamlining the show and allowing the relationship between the two characters to expand. Ebersole had worked with the show's creators: director Greif, composer
Scott Frankel, lyricist
Michael Korie and librettist
Doug Wright, previously on her Tony-winning turn in the musical Grey Gardens. On the other hand, LuPone had no professional history with the team, but says she never worked with a more collaborative bunch.
The actresses provide capsule biographies of Arden and Rubinstein's amazing lives as superstar entrepreneurs who both rose from poverty to achieve enormous success and riches in an era when females running businesses were still a rarity. With the show's action taking place from 1935 to 1964, LuPone and Ebersole mature before the audience's eyes, portraying women who had to sacrifice a great deal of emotional comfort to achieve unparalleled material success. As LuPone points out during the interview, "They were creators and CEOs of empires before women had the right to vote."
The
War Paint edition of THEATER TALK premieres in the New York City metropolitan area Friday, April 21 (2017) on
PBS station Thirteen/WNET at 1:30 AM (early Saturday morning) and repeats there on Sunday 4/23 at 11:30 AM; it re-airs on CUNY TV* Saturday 4/22 at 8:30 PM, Sunday 4/23 at 12:30 PM, and Monday 4/24 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM; and also airs on WLIW/21 on Monday 4/24 at 5:30 PM and on NYCLife on Thursday 4/27 at 11 PM.
THEATER TALK is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The CUNY TV Foundation, and The Friends of THEATER TALK.
*CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is broadcast in the NYC metropolitan area on digital Ch. 25.3 and cablecast in the city's five boroughs on Ch. 75 (Spectrum & Optimum/Brooklyn), Ch. 77 (RCN), and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). THEATER TALK episodes are available online anytime at www.cuny.tv and www.theatertalk.org and via iTunes.
Image courtesy of Theater Talk Productions Inc. & CUNY TV
