Fail
A revival of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, starring Daniel Radcliffe, just opened on Broadway. The reviews were mixed, but it got slammed by The New York Times, so I'm not sure if even Harry Potter's magic can save it.
I was more intrigued by Charles McNulty's review in the LA Times. He's got problems with the Pulitzer Prize-winning show itself:
I agree there are dated aspects. It takes place in a world where men were executives and womem were secretaries looking for a husband. But once you accept that, you've got one of the best-constructed, funniest books ever written for a musical.
Burrows (who's mainly responsible for the libretto) based his script on a satirical book that had no plot. Out of it he built a plot about a young man rising in a company that features one funny twist after another. Episodic? Yes. But that's the right way to tell the story. What does McNulty want, a show that respects the classical unities?
By the way, I've seen those old sitcoms--they're just like How To Succeed except their plots aren't clever or intricate and their jokes aren't brilliant.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
2 Comments:
"How to Succeed..." is in my top 5 favorite musicals. Wasn't it revived not that long ago with Matthew Broderick? Did the NY Times hate that one too?
I've wondered if the show could be updated. For example, I don't think the comedy is reliant on the division of men as executives and women as secretaries. There is the wonderful number "A Secretary is Not a Toy", but if you made some of the executives women, and some of the secretaries men, I think it could still work.
Much harder to update would be something like Pajama Game, unless you set it in Thailand.
The Broderick revival was in 1995. It got a good review from The New York Times and had a decent run, though nothing like the hugely successful revival of Guys And Dolls a few years earlier.
There have been a number of attempts to update the show without massive rewriting. The Broderick revival had secretaries turn the tables on executives in the number you mention. There was also a version where the male and female roles were reversed. I just don't see how these are good ideas--the show is from a time (one of the numbers is "Happy To Keep His Dinner Warm"--even though it was always done with a bit of irony) and either you play it unashamed or you shouldn't play it at all.
The Pajama Game, by the way, was revived a few years back with a name cast but didn't fare too well.
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