![](https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2835_1493988061.jpg)
Show: Madame Rubinstein
Society: Park Theatre (professional)
Venue: Park 200
Credits: 'World Premiere' - written by John Misto. Produced by Park Theatre and Oliver Mackwood in association with TBO Productions
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 03/05/2017
Madame Rubinstein
Chris Abbott | 04 May 2017 12:35pm
Jonathan Forbes, Miriam Margolyes and Frances Barber in Madame Rubinstein at Park Theatre. Photo: Simon Annand
Opening to a packed audience studded with acting luminaries, Madame Rubinstein at the Park Theatre provides a feast of bravura acting although within an unsure production. As opposing cosmetic matriarchs, Miriam Margolyes as Helena Rubinstein faces up to Frances Barber’s Elizabeth Arden, with only the all-purpose male assistant played by Jonathan Forbes to come between them.
Forbes, known as Irish for much of the play, is gay, troubled and on the make but becomes important to both women at different times but particularly to Rubinstein. The performance from Jonathan Forbes, gratuitous nudity included, is thoughtful and detailed but inevitably over-shadowed by two theatrical powerhouses playing larger than life characters.
Both of the leads convince, with Frances Barber’s Canadian Arden, despite a wig that gives her the look of a better presented Fanny Craddock, sophisticated and elegant. Whether talking, a little uncomfortably, to her offstage horses or engaging in verbal tussles with her rival, this is a delicate performance leaving audiences wanting to know more about this complex character.
The focus throughout, however, is on Helena Rubinstein: a Jewish émigré from Krakow who began her career in Australia. She begins the play as something of a caricature both in physical form and in her dialogue, but there is subtlety in her performance in a part which could so easily have gone over the top.
For much of the play the narrative is the rivalry, as well as Rubinstein’s frugal ways. In the second act however, and particular through the troubled but growing relationship with Irish, we begin to see the tragedy of this woman’s life. Having built her fortune on selling concealment to other women, Rubinstein has also covered up her own vulnerabilities around the fate of her family and the later loss of one of her sons.
All three actors create believable characters and never fail to engage with the audience, but even their experience and expertise is taxed by some aspects of the production. Director Jez Bond and designer Alistair Turner have set the action in front of a large image of the central character in which there is only one door. Although some entrances are made through the audience, for much of the time actors have to wait while the same desk and chairs are shuffled back and forth through that one door, standing uncomfortably in the half-light as minor adjustments are made to their costumes (although Rubinstein wears the same dress for the whole time-span covered by the play).
John Misto’s play is replete with one-liners and in the hands of this cast never less than amusing, but scenes are short and seem truncated at times, almost as if this was originally written for television, where the author has much experience. The exposition is sometimes clunky and some of the dialogue is trite, with the role of Irish often seeming to exist just to tell Rubinstein (and us) what is happening in her life. The insults hurled by the two women at their unseen rival Revson, founder of Revlon, ring true however, especially when they bewail the fact that he has better access to the materials needed to make cosmetics and celebrate his downfall after rigging television quizzes.
As is said in the play “It’s a pity we never met” and in real life they did not, but this has not stopped others from wondering how such a meeting would have played out, not just in this play but in the current Broadway musical about the two women, War Paint. In the end, the acting in Madame Rubinstein rises above script and production to provide an entertaining and enlightening experience. Miriam Margoyles, in particular, endows her graduation speech and final moments with a gravitas almost entirely of her own making.
- : admin
- : 03/05/2017