But, after seeing Daniel Radcliffe in his Broadway turn as J. Pierpont Finch in the very latest revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," I am going to stop ignoring the young man. The dude can sing. The dude can dance. And, as long as he doesn't fly around on some broom, he and I are good to go.
While it's not a perfect musical, I've always been a fan of this show. I was first exposed to it in its movie version which was released in 1967 with both Robert Morse and Michele Lee reprising their stage roles. When it was brought back to Broadway with Matthew Broderick and the then-unknown Megan Mullally in the mid 90s, I saw the live edition for the very first time. And adored it. So, here we go almost fifteen years later and Broadway brings it back once more. A starring vehicle to be sure. And the young wizard from England pulls it off. At the very least, a Tony nomination is on the way.
You may know the tale. A window washer reads a "how to" book on succeeding in the corporate world and, by the end of almost three hours, he's running some conglomerate called World Wide Wickets. Guy loses wash bucket, guy finds job, guy finds girl, guy loses job, guy loses girl, guy wins back job, guy wins back girl, and guy doesn't win back wash bucket. Talk about a tried-and-true musical comedy formula.
The original show from 1962 won a Pulitzer Prize, despite the fact that there are some problems in the construction. The first act starts very, very slowly and doesn't really get going for the first fifteen minutes. That probably wasn't an issue when JFK was a President and not an airport, but, in the attention deficited new millenium, younger audiences might be scrambling for the exits with text messages ready to go. In this edition, director Rob Ashford, straight from his sparkling work on last year's revival of my personal favorite "Promises, Promises," does his best to shore up the original speed bumps. Once the "Coffee Break" mercifully starts, the show shifts into a higher gear.
Admittedly, there are some duds in the "How To Succeed" music and lyrics by the legendary Frank Loesser. In fact, the movie wisely dumped a couple of them altogether. Here, with inventive staging, the "Loesser" efforts were more like a hangnail than a sore thumb. Director Ashford can keep mining old 60s musicals as much as he wants. He seems to have found his creative destiny. Never were so many Laura Petrie hair-dos welcome on the Broadway stage.
TV's John Larroquette plays J.B. Biggley, the role originally essayed by Rudy Vallee complete with megaphone. Truth be told, I've never liked his work, but, in this his Broadway debut, he works mightily and wins me over for the first time in his career. As far as I am concerned, he is now officially forgiven for years of needless histrionics on "Night Court."
In the original show, Charles Nelson Reilly won a Tony Award for Supporting Actor as Finch's snarky nemesis, Bud Frump. The good news is that the same fortune likely awaits Christopher J. Hanke, who steals every scene he's in. Let's just hope that he doesn't wind up his career as a panelist on Match Game 2018.
As Rosemary Pilkington, Rose Hemingway gives a valient but unsuccessful try to make this role work and she can blame the original playwright, Abe Burrows, for her suffering. Almost inexplicably, Burrows alternated between over-writing and under-writing the character to the point of utter confusion. When I saw the Broderick version, I remember saying that Megan Mullally was no Michele Lee. Well, in 2011, Rose Hemingway is no Megan Mullally. She tries hard, but the real challenge started when Burrows put carbon paper into his Smith Corona fifty years ago.
The reverse can be said this time around for the should-be-guaranteed-laughs-and-mayhem role of Hedy La Rue, the bouncy and buxom girlfriend of big boss Biggley. La Rue needs to be played by a big ham, but, here, we get a single slice of turkey bologna. Tammy Blanchard misses one golden opportunity after another and leaves barrels of money on the table. The performance is as flat as Gomer Pyle's crewcut when he entered the Marines.
Another casting misfire comes with the choice of CNN's inept Anderson Cooper as the pre-recorded "book voice" that guides Finch through his corporate journey. I can't find who did the voice in the 1962 original, but Walter Cronkite did the honors for the Broderick edition and he nailed it with his God-like intonations. You need power here. As a journalist, Cooper has about as much as personality as a head of Iceberg lettuce. His presence is as flat as Elvis Presley's crewcut when he entered the Army. Was Tom Brokaw busy? Did Charles Osgood suddenly start to stammer like the King of England? Hell, did the Cronkite family estate request too much money for the tapes from the 1995 show? Hopefully, the tape of Cooper disintegrates faster than you can say "Mission Impossible."
But, all quibbles stop when Daniel Radcliffe enters the scene, this time on a window washer's rope from below the stage and not the rafters. The kid has a future on the stage and not just for dropping his boxers when he did "Equus." A decent singer, he shines even more brightly in dance numbers when he seems to be channeling the light-footed-ness of James Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Boundless energy is displayed at every turn. He's especially impressive as he literally ping pongs across the stage in the numbers "Grand Old Ivy" and, of course, the perennial show-stopper, "The Brotherhood of Man." This might be the smartest career move anybody could make. Radcliffe immediately stows away that dorky wizard shit and marks his territory as a versatile and like-to-be-frequently-hired actor.
Of course, there's another word of caution that needs to be shared if you venture out to see this "How To Succeed." Because of this personal audience with the beloved Harry Potter, the Al Hirschfeld Theater is being packed to the gills with loads of teen age girls masturbating for the very first time. When Daniel takes his curtain call, the ovation is nothing short of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. At a Broadway theater, Woodstock breaks out. Yes, he deserves every accolade he gets. But this kind of loudness is usually reserved for the outdoors and certainly a respected theatrical house. The screams seem oddly out-of-place. If you want to really enjoy this "How To Succeed," you want to wait and get tickets when Justin Bieber has some NY concert dates and the teeny boppers are playing with themselves elsewhere.
Leaving the theater, though, there was a big smile on my face and a lift to my spirits. How many times does that really happen any more?
Yes, they Succeeded.
Dinner last night: Virginia ham plus potato salad and cole slaw.
1 comment:
You left out your encounter with Michele Lee at the Hollywood Bowl.
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