There are so many potentially offensive, stridently sexist, ethically outrageous, socially awkward moments in any production of “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” that for this otherwise funny, sweet, tuneful and upwardly mobile show to work, you have place it in an alternate universe far removed from our own.
That’s what UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre is doing in its new production of the musical, which opens the 2016 Nutmeg Summer Series and plays through Sunday.
With its bawdy atmosphere, central tale of a lovable trickster and super-long title, “How To Succeed…” has a lot in common with another 1960s Broadway hit, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
But “How To Succeed…” isn’t set in ancient Rome, and it doesn’t excuse its chauvinist high jinks by wrapping itself in togas and behaving in an old-world burlesque style. It’s set at a modern corporation, World Wide Wickets, a company where the male employees harass the female ones with impunity. The scolding song “A Secretary is Not a Toy” is staged ironically, with its titular heroines thrusting out their backsides in a choreographed ballet of voyeuristic objectification. The only way, it seems, that you are punished for sexual transgressions in this work environment is for the unforgivable crime of making a pass at the boss’ mistress. On the business side, executives are incompetent, cowardly “yes men.”
You need to manufacture your comedy somehow, certainly, but “How To Succeed…” is loyal to a certain popular brand of sexist, classist, alcoholic, corporate humor that’s largely gone out of style, and has invested in the large economy size.
The show is based on a self-help-book parody by Shepherd Mead. The book itself is excerpted in voice-over sound bites, intoned at CT Rep by NPR personality and Courant columnist Colin McEnroe.
The early-1960s setting helps a bit when you need to nod at a particularly egregious bit of misogyny and remind yourself “Well, things were different then.” It also doesn’t hurt that TV’s “Mad Men” was able to make these same mid-20th-century workplace injustices seem dramatic and entertaining, if not entirely palatable, for modern audiences.
The show’s hero, J. Pierrepont Finch is not immune from the calls to cheat one’s way to the top. Following Mead’s manual, Finch begins the show as a window washer but immediately gets his foot in the door at WWW, rising in a matter of weeks from mailroom worker to junior executive to head of advertising. He misrepresents his alma mater to get in good with CEO J.B. Biggley, wards off the less successful rise-to-the-top techniques of the boss’ nephew Bud Frump and is largely oblivious to the affection showered on him by the sweet, loving receptionist Rosemary Pilkington.
Finch is played by Riley Costello, who’s so cute and boyish that he’s really more like a child (his last CT Rep role was as Peter Pan). J.B. Biggley is played with credible bluster by Fred Grandy, the 1970s “Love Boat” Gopher who later became a four-term Iowa congressman and CEO of Goodwill Industries. Robert Fritz is an overwound, sputtering Bud Frump, and Sarah Schenkkan warbles beautifully as Rosemary.
The main reason to attempt “How To Succeed…” post-feminism, and in an age of enlightened corporate mottos such as “Don’t be evil,” is its exceptional Frank Loesser score. It contains such empowering anthems as “I Believe in You” and “Brotherhood of Man,” as well as such comic gems as “Grand Old Ivy” and “Coffee Break.” Given that the songs outpower other elements of the show, one wishes for more accomplished singing voices from the supporting cast, who seem to have been chosen primarily for their comic acting abilities. There’s some good dancing, but the main showcase dance number from the original show’s second act —”The Pirate Dance,” isn’t in this version at all.
Tina Fabrique, who played executive secretary Miss Jones on Broadway in ’95, reprises the role here. In her one big singing number, she unleashes the scat-vocal stylings that will be familiar to those who saw her star as Ella Fitzgerald in “Ella” at Hartford’s TheaterWorks in 2005 or at the Long Wharf Theatre in 2010, or as a guest vocalist with the Hartford Symphony in 2011. Unfortunately, Fabrique’s jazz excursions must compete onstage with a line of white men in business suits loudly tap-dancing.
Vincent Cardinal, directing his penultimate show for Connecticut Rep before he leaves his post at UConn for a professorship at the University of Michigan next month, creates a fast-paced, fantastical atmosphere that — played against scenic designer Tim Brown’s clean, bright, shifting walls and backdrops — has a cool, kitschy comic-strip quality to it.
For those of us who worship antique writing devices, this show is a shrine, and proof that “How To Succeed…” can succeed despite all its jiggling-bosom, Neanderthal gender-stereotyping business.
The Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert and Frank Loesser, directed by Vincent Cardinal, is at the University of Connecticut’s Jorgensen Auditorium, 2132 Hillside Road, Storrs, through Sunday. Remaining performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $50. Information: 860-486-2113, crt.uconn.edu.
