Musicals these days are rarely vehicles for satire. It is refreshing, therefore, to see a revival of this sprightly Broadway show from 1961. It reunited the Guys and Dolls team of Frank Loesser (music and lyrics) and Abe Burrows (co-librettist) and, even if it can’t match its legendary predecessor, it has acquired a fortuitous topicality at a time when a businessman is dubiously installed in the White House.
The show takes its title from a mocking how-to manual by Shepherd Mead and charts the unstoppable rise of the fictional J Pierrepont Finch up the corporate ladder. He starts as a window cleaner at World Wide Wickets, gets a job in the mailroom and, through a mixture of chicanery, cunning and downright lies, ascends to the very top.
Even when he takes on the poisoned chalice of advertising director and a TV treasure-hunt goes badly wrong, he somehow survives to become top dog. By the end, his eyes light up when the possibility of becoming the nation’s president is briefly mentioned.
Even if you wonder why a female colleague remains loyally devoted to this self-obsessed schemer, the show doesn’t display the sour sexism of the recently revived Promises, Promises (1968): indeed one number, A Secretary Is Not a Toy, specifically confronts the exploitation of women in the workplace. But that is only one of the Loesser numbers that make the show worth revival. The Company Way tunefully attacks the kind of corporate yes-man who believes “Executive policy is by me OK”. Loesser’s skill is also seen in the number Been a Long Day, where hero and heroine spout home-going platitudes while a third party articulates their real thoughts.
You could argue that the show has it both ways. As the American critic Harold Clurman pointed out, “it deplores our addiction to the success-status-money fetish – but not too emphatically”. But there is more wit than we are used to in modern musicals. Discovering that the company boss is attached to his alma mater, Finch joins him in a rousing parody of a ra-ra college anthem, Grand Old Ivy. The absurdity of fashionable chic is also neatly punctured in a number where the company’s female top echelon sport an identical dress that they hymn as “this irresistible Paris original”.
Benji Sperring’s revival makes the most of modest resources and Ben Ferguson directs a decent nine-strong band placed above the action. Marc Pickering, exchanging knowing looks with the audience every time he exploits office politics, lends Finch a boyish charm that almost redeems his built-in deviousness. Andrew C Wadsworth brings a wealth of musical experience to the role of the company chief and there is good support from Lizzii Hills as his obligatory, if not always obliging, lover and Hannah Grover as Finch’s uncritical supporter. It’s no musical masterpiece, but, when it came to writing beguiling tunes, few were greater than Loesser.
• At Wilton’s Music Hall, London, until 22 April. Box office: 020-7702 2789.
