Arts
By Martin Brady
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Presented through Aug. 27 at Boiler Room Theatre
A cutthroat workplace where employees are addicted to caffeine, nepotism runs rampant and the CEO carries on shamelessly with his secretary—as familiar as that might sound even today, it remains a challenge to grasp exactly what the authors of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying were saying when the musical comedy made its Broadway debut in 1961. But with America in the midst of a post-World War II economic boom and the blissful Eisenhower years still fresh in our collective memory, lampooning corporate culture was a ripe idea.
Coffee Break: Megan Murphy, Patrick Kramer and Olivia Dean conduct serious business in Boiler Room's production.
The launch point for writers Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert was a satirical novel by Shepherd Mead about achieving success in the business world. All you had to do (if you were male, of course) was dress properly, speak shrewdly and make the right connections. Next stop—a corner office and junior-executive upward mobility.
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It's doubtful the creators anticipated the feminist uprising that would eventually raise the issue of equal opportunity. The show's World Wide Wicket Company is a bastion of testosterone, with women serving as functional ornaments, all of them holding the title of "secretary," a word our PC society is now even loath to use. Hence, the primary reason to engage with this period piece—now playing at Boiler Room Theatre—is to spy beneath its dated exterior, to see if the book's verbal salvos and the songs of composer/lyricist Frank Loesser hold up after 45 years.
In their own kitschy way, they do. The (white) men may be in charge here, but they're a snippy, self-serving bunch, and it's not as if the script makes a good case for their superiority. At the same time, there's a strange fascination in observing the females play their subservient roles, especially when a wonderful singer like Megan Murphy is belting out Loesser gems like "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm," with its daring interval jumps. Murphy's character, Rosemary Pilkington, is the secretary looking to make the transition to happy corporate New Rochelle wife, and it's worth pondering whether Loesser et al. conceived her knowing the potential folly of her ways, or otherwise embraced her as the romantic ideal who ought to win the heart of a truly good man (of which the show has none).
The best she can do is J. Pierrepont Finch, a scalawag who knows how to push the right career buttons and who's more in love with himself than he might ever be with a woman. Patrick Kramer is splendidly cast in the role that made a career for impish Broadway and film actor Robert Morse. Kramer finds his own distinctive rhythms, gets his laughs and proves an able-voiced match for Murphy in the beautiful "Rosemary" and the usually overlooked but infinitely clever "Been a Long Day" (which receives an assist from marvelous BRT newcomer Olivia Dean). Kramer also handles the tuneful "I Believe in You" with equal amounts of smarm and charm, and carries "The Company Way" and "Grand Old Ivy," two of the show's better duets.
Finch's main rival is the boss's nephew, Bud Frump, a peculiar and mostly unlikable fellow. Thomas DeMarcus spurs the plot forward with his portrayal, filled with delicious bitchiness and an ultimately harmless approach to malevolence. DeMarcus also leads the cast in "Coffee Break," a hilarious spoof of group mentality driven home by a jittery Loesser melody that even today sounds progressive.
The rousing closer, "Brotherhood of Man," is a hugely impressive full-cast affair featuring the tabletop performance of Melinda Doolittle as a reserved executive secretary who breaks out in full-blown gospel/blues voice.
Jamey Green generally directs the proceedings with his usual sharpness, but the show drags by the middle of Act 2. The scenes of corporate finagling don't keep up with the tunes, nor do they generate any new ideas that might result in yet another worthy musical number. It's easy enough to accept How to Succeed's bygone social boundaries; within context, there are many amusing moments watching the cartoonish characters vie for position. But some very ordinary writing mars the later scenes, and all of Loesser's musical brilliance can't hide this fact.
Green receives creative help from choreographer Lauri Bright, who manages to squeeze some intricate dancing into cramped quarters, and Billy Ditty, whose costumes—an amalgam of early-'60s color and style—go a long way toward helping establish the show's nostalgic feel.
Green leads a combo of four, including keyboardist Mark Beall. They crank out Loesser's tricky score with efficiency, but the occasional use of synthesized horns and strings sounds cheesy. Thankfully, the greatness of the music overcomes the questionable choice of instrumental sounds.
Among the other principals is John Wilson, who plays J.B. Biggley, the self-absorbed, philandering company president. Wilson slogs his way through this critical role, and it's safe to say that his work does nothing to help those lumbering Act 2 scenes. His love interest, as it were, is Hedy LaRue, a classic dumb-blonde caricature of the era (though in this case she's a redhead). Her dictation skills may be nil, but Hedy is the most successful manipulator of them all. Many feminists would recoil at the notion that she's anything but the fantasy by-product of a chauvinistic male's imagination. Yet some might applaud her for her willingness to do what is necessary to get what she wants. Melodie Madden Adams plays Hedy, and her over-the-top wiggling and preening proves engaging, not only because we know she's a throwback, but also because she inspires Pavlovian responses in the one-track minds of the men who follow her around.
On one level, How to Succeed evokes the same kind of dark cynicism in another prominent corporate-bashing vehicle of its day, Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 film The Apartment. We don't have to take the musical play as seriously as all that, of course, and when things are hopping along—as in most of the first act—we're rewarded with genuine laughs and Broadway tunesmithing at its best.