{"id":2106,"date":"2016-08-01T03:56:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T10:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=2106"},"modified":"2016-08-01T03:56:35","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T10:56:35","slug":"lupone-ebersole-a-billy-masters-exclusive-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2016\/08\/01\/lupone-ebersole-a-billy-masters-exclusive-video\/","title":{"rendered":"LuPone & Ebersole – A Billy Masters Exclusive Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theatre devotees are flocking to Chicago for the chance to see Patti LuPone <\/strong>and Christine Ebersole <\/strong>star together in the new musical, War Paint<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 You don’t think I’d let a little hospital stay keep me away from seeing two double Tony Award <\/em>winners sparring, do you?\u00a0 So off I went – facial bandaging be damned.\u00a0 As luck would have it, the musicalized story of cosmetic mavens Helena Rubinstein <\/strong>and Elizabeth Arden <\/strong>included a passing moment of electroshock therapy, but that’s neither hither nor yon.\u00a0 It’s a curious thing to form a show around two women who never actually met despite having so much in common (including swapping the men in their lives).\u00a0 Most of the show is done in parallel scenes on opposite sides of the stage, with the ladies only meeting face-to-face in a fictitious late-life encounter.\u00a0 Despite both women’s success, they are victims of their own ambition, of the times, and of their inability to change.\u00a0 Arden is not allowed to join an exclusive club (which she helped design) because “for a woman to have money is one thing.\u00a0 But to earn it?\u00a0 Surely you understand that changes things”.\u00a0 Likewise, Rubinstein is discriminated against when trying to buy a penthouse because of her ethnicity.\u00a0 Recounting this episode, LuPone’s Rubinstein is sanguine:\u00a0 “So, what did I do?\u00a0 Did I cry like a child?\u00a0 Do I walk away?\u00a0 No – I buy the building, instead!”\u00a0 Shades of Evita<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Both LuPone and Ebersole are at the top of their game.\u00a0 Both are actresses of extraordinary calibre whose vocal abilities are two sides of the same coin: Ebersole a cooler, purer soprano, while LuPone is more idiosyncratic, guttural, and harsh.\u00a0 These vocal attributes fit the characters ideally – not surprising since the roles were written for them.\u00a0 And yet, there are times when the singers swap harmonies with striking dramatic results.\u00a0 It made me wonder how each would play the other’s role.\u00a0 It’s a challenge that perhaps they’ll tackle one day.\u00a0 For now, the show has been extended at Chicago’s Goodman <\/em>until August 21 (if you can get a ticket).\u00a0 I don’t think it’s too early to anticipate a very healthy Broadway<\/em> run shortly thereafter – after a bit of tweaking and judicious pruning.\u00a0 While only a few scant seconds of video of the musical have been released, you won’t be surprised to hear that quite a bit more has made its way into my rather well-worn lap.\u00a0 A certain someone has supplied us with fantastic footage of the full final face-off.\u00a0 And the only place you’ll see these fabulous 15 minutes is\u00a0on\u00a0BillyMasters.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Theatre devotees are flocking to Chicago for the chance to see Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole star together in the new musical, War Paint.\u00a0 You don’t think I’d let a little hospital stay keep me away from seeing two double Tony Award winners sparring, do you?\u00a0 So off I went – facial bandaging be damned.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2107,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions\/2107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}