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How To Succeed director Des McAnuff: "Everything is satirized in this piece; nobody is exempt"

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Megan Mullaly plays Rosemary, the sweet secretary who is the object of Broderick's affection in How To Succeed in Business without Really Trying

over a company for three hours. There has to be a certain amount of joy when he succeeds, as if he honestly didn't expect it. At the same time if he's too friendly and light-heard, there would be no bite. So I had to find the balance between the two extremes."

Finch advances rapidly through the company by following the step-by-step guidelines offered in a How To Succeed book, instructions that, in this production, are narrated to the audience on tape by the authoritative voice of Walter Cronkite. The show is populated by bumbling executives and sassy secretaries; this was, after all, 1961, when the board room was the private domain of men. The men have to be reminded that "A Secretary Is Not a Toy," and the women sing of being "Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm," numbers that might raise the hackles of the politically correct police but which are, in fact, tongue in cheek.

"I think people have a certain prejudice about all ideas that predate them," says McAnuff. "There's a tendency to forget that Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows were quite hip people. 'Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm' is a send-up. Everything is sat-irized in this piece; nobody is exempt. But today too many people tend to think that if you portray something, you're promoting it. Eventually we'll get to the point where we're so afraid to offend anybody that there will be no theatre at all."

Although McAnuff had no interest in mollifying or placating the humorless, he did set out to give th e show a subtly more modern perspective. "What I tried to do is clarify the point of view," says McAnuff, "clairfy the fact that the women were stratified in this secretarial pool. Men could leapfrog over them from the mail room into executive roles, but basically the women were running the company. And that is there in the writing of the original."

Every change had to be approved by Jo Sullivan Loesser, the composer's widow and a consultant on the show. The musical has been reorchestrated, and the opening number of the second act, "Cinderella, Darling"--a send-up that "doesn't make its point strongly enough" according to McAnuff--has been replaced. "I changed the book quite a bit, pruning, shaping and tidying it, sometimes restoring things from one of the earlier drafts, and occasionally doing some rewriting. And there were changes that were made necessary in order to catch up to contemporary stage crafts."

The sleekly modern look of the production is attained largely through stunning video projections of New York that capture a sense of the city's vertical mobili-ty--literally and symbolically. New York becomes an additional character in the show: You can feel its pace, its rhythm, its drive, its pulse. "That was absolutely our ambition," says McAnuff. "The show is set in this glass and steel tower, which is not just an environment, but a metaphor. And the idea of being able to bring Manhattan to life was thrilling to all of us."

What would Frank Loesser think of this production and its star? "He would have loved Des's concept of the show," says Jo Sullivan Loesser. "And he would have been so pleased with Matthew. Matthew is different than Bobby, but just as good in his own way. He sings very well, and he has so much charm. Plus he has a bit of wicked-ness and impishness, which really works well. Frank would have adored him."

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