“How To Succeed”: My FT Review
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How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying,” a 1961 musical, has been revived on Broadway with Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe (pictured with Rose Hemingway). Here’s a link to my review. The entire text is also after the jump.
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in entertaining revival on Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe, debuted in 1961. But its jazz-tinged music is influenced by the Depression and the second world war and its polished lyrics by the exuberance of postwar America.
The stylish malaise of Mad Men, however, has conditioned us to think of the Kennedy years, when How To Succeed is set, as a downer, whereas the era is remembered by Americans for vigour and optimism. It is this sunnier version that composer Frank Loesser, with the help of book writers Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, celebrates in How To Succeed.
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The giddy cocktail contains a dash of bitters. J. Pierrepont Finch, played by Radcliffe, known to the world as Harry Potter, uses a ruthlessly amoral guidebook, with the same title as the show, to climb the corporate ladder. He neglects his girlfriend, Rosemary Pilkington – a talented, unspectacular Rose Hemingway – and outmanoeuvres the nerdy co-worker, Bud Frump, portrayed by Christopher J. Hanke. Finch must also contend with more buttoned-down colleagues in order to vault into the presidential suite at the World Wide Wicket Company, which is occupied by J.B. Biggley, played with gusto by John Larroquette.
Musically, How to Succeed is lesser Loesser – not in the hits-jammed league of Guys and Dolls. Too many of the songs exist to conjure the period rather than to advance story. Others – “A Secretary Is Not a Toy†– aim to skewer sexism while enabling the audience to wallow in it.
Against a blindingly bright pastel set reminiscent of a box of eyelid paints, Rob Ashford, the director and choreographer, puts his stamp on the material by staging the show as a dance extravaganza. Radcliffe survives this athletic conception manfully. Blessed with winning stage presence, he is not an instinctively graceful dancer, but he keeps up with the chorus. He sings persuasively, though not always accurately.
In the swinging 11 o’clock number, “Brotherhood of Manâ€, Radcliffe rouses the ensemble to ebullience that sends the audience home happy if not delirious. In such moments any comparisons between Radcliffe and the role’s originator, Robert Morse, seem beside the point.
