Theatre Review: “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”
Whenever corporate culture rears its head, this play seems to re-emerge. Thank goodness it's back.
By Dennis Wemm
THEATRE CRITIC
Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Abe Burown, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert
Presented by Stage Door Productions, directed by David Schubert
Ahhh! The 1960s! Questionable morals, questionable thrills, questionable decisions, right? But what about the folks who were the establishment, not the counterculture? They populate “How to Succeed.”
Based on a satirical faux advice book that lampooned corporate culture (subtitled The Dastard's Guide to Fame and Fortune), this very incisive and really funny musical traces the progress of a corporate thrall from window-washer to the very top of the wicket making hierarchy. J. Pierpont Finch (George Gray) wanders through his career by pure opportunism, by uncanny timing, by reading personalities, and mostly by giving people what they want at the right time. The whole performance is a game of whether he'll get away with it long enough to avoid escaping to Venezuela, the fate of those who DO get caught.
We first see him outside of a window in a Manhattan office building not working too hard at washing the pane. He's busy reading, in case you couldn't guess, a book titled How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He’s not immediately a leading man, in fact no one takes him very seriously at first, because each of them is busy doing their job—or as little of it as they can get away with—or busy building their personal “credentials.” It being the early ‘60s, for the women characters that means finding the best catch, then bouncing into his life and trying not to seem too desperate when it doesn't work out.
Within the first moments of the show, he's talked himself into a job, then into another job. Within corporate culture he is never found out because no one is actually sure what he does. The book (voiced by Matthew Johnson) tells him what comes next, and traps to avoid (getting stuck in the mail room—um, that's an IT department for paper snail-mail.) Note: a lot of cultural references are very much of the period.
Business there and then is a very formal, closed, cultural silo that seems to have very little to do with actually making wickets—whatever they are. They've gone to the same colleges, play the same cultural games, recognize the same cultural icons. Finch doesn't get in, but he doesn't let that fact faze him. He climbs the inner offices the way he previously climbed skyscrapers.
Knowing an up-and-comer when she sees one, the competent and compassionate Rosemary (Emma Palotti) pegs him as a means to a nice house in New Rochelle (then a nice, suburban neighborhood with nice people living in nice developments; i.e. The Dick Van Dyke Show). She gives him intel on his competition and he starts to see her as a partner in crime, while she develops a serious crush that is obvious to every (woman) in the office. She is liked by everyone in the office who notices her, but Finch is so blinkered he doesn't pick up on it. He discovers that he loves Rosemary while kissing Hedy La Rue (Caeli Schamel), the office vamp. He has to crow about it triumphantly. Hedy says “I didn't know my own strength.” That's the level of reality in the show, and the sense of the humor throughout the evening.
It's an old-fashioned musical. The plot travels along from fun and pleasant song to pleasant song, each of which builds the interest. It culminates with a rousing “eleven o'clocker.” No Sweeney Todd here with caustic humor and wall to wall songs. The scenes are satire, which is well padded with human interest, always cogent and ironic, frequently hilarious.
The office is packed with clearly recognizable character types from the workplace and from other satirical views of the business world. Finch, guided by his handy book, learns to recognize the people who can pave his path to success: the personnel manager, Smitty (Cassie Truchsess) who seems to have a true need to help those who wish to succeed—and also sports a fearsome vibrato; Miss Jones (Miriam Liss), who rules the office with an iron fist until she comes up against someone who sees her true self—Finch, obviously. Flattery can get him anywhere, and his boyish audacity seems to connect him with every woman in the office.
The male characters accept him because he is apparently no threat to their particular game, until he becomes a threat and by then it's too late. He's playing career leapfrog and everyone he leaps over ends up face first in the dirt. The first and most resilient recognized antagonist is Bud Frump (Zach Casou) who is the President’s wife’s nephew. Not quite close enough related to the big boss himself to be a nepo-baby, Frump is ambitious but also the anti-Finch. He’s too outwardly egotistical and short-sighted to climb a ladder out of drone-hood and into the golden light and parachute of the executive suite. Finch gets out of the mailroom, Frump is put in charge of it. The book says: “Never get stuck in the mailroom.” Twimble (William Wilson) has been there 25 years and his brain is horrifyingly washed by corporate policy. Bud looks trapped there, but climbs his way out because his machinations are desperate, personal, and ruthless. Repeat this Finch/Frump battle until one of them ends up in the drink.
I could fill this entire review with a play by play of the machinations, but I won’t. You’ll have to see the play itself. The play is about three hours long, but every moment is golden. And I'm a sucker for any play that can combine Old Ivy, Groundhogs, Chipmunks, mud, and college football into a single musical number. So much whimsy! (Pause to make a pun about Wemm and whimsey.)
So, to tick off the parties responsible: director David Schubert keeps the pot boiling moment for moment. The action is only occasionally frenetic but full of the kind of character energy that propels attention throughout the show. He uses the entire stage, and needs it for a significantly sized cast that stays in back of the fourth wall. No complaints here! Angela Donadio's music direction and vocal coaching are equally impeccable. These songs jump from musical theatre jazz to Latin and tango laced rhythms to ballads to dance numbers without a pause, and equally strong. Though some voices seemed to be amplified, the orchestra/vocal balance was, well, pitch perfect. Katie Cusack shows a real are for interpreting each musical style, while also maintaining a single movement vocabulary unifying each number to all the rest. Even the center column gets to be a dance partner in a kind of seductive male pole dance.
The sets include hallways, elevators, offices, what looks like a penthouse party room with city view. Mondrian patterns enameled on the walls set the scene, and white walls. Cathy Bergdahl dresses the stage with her usual utility but the spare scenic space in ultra-landscape orientation fits this play better than most, and she gives Schubert and Cusack a wonderful playground for all the scenes.
Is there anything else I would wish for? Well, yes. The show has a lot of actors doubled from chorus to brand new, never-seen before characters and back to chorus (or to a new brand new character) with a change of suit. If all of the characters were identified all the time by name it would be easier to tell which incarnation you are watching at a given time, or maybe hats or wigs. On the other hand, some of the doublers provide us with such intensely absurd characterizations in at least one character that the familiar face is less of an impediment. More often this is an afterthought. And it provides the public with a good reason to contribute to this worthy production company that gets the show on no matter what, time and again.
Just when you think “Oh, oh. They're about to cross a line into culturally offensive behavior!” the show turns the entire situation around. I refer to scenes preceding the number “A Secretary is Not a Toy,” which shows that even in the dark ages, office etiquette was pretty strict. It also shows that mutually consensual shenanigans always seem to find a way.
All in all, please see this show. It's a great way to cap a summer night out, or to take a break from a really hot Sunday afternoon.
Dramaturgy
Tracking the history of the play is like reading a history of American corporate excess. First produced in 1961 the golden age of advertising (and television) with Robert Finch, it played for three years, closed in 1964 then lay professionally dormant until the movie was released (1967). It was revived in 1989 (Matthew Broderick as Finch) and again in 2011 with Daniel Radcliff. It seems like every time corporate culture comes up with excesses that cause people to notice it, this show gets a revival. Hmmm…
Dennis Wemm is a retired professor of theatre and communication, having taught and led both departments at Glenville State College for 34 years. In his of time he was president and sometimes Executive Director of the West Virginia Theatre Conference, secretary and president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and generally enjoyed a life in theatre.
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