How To Make It To The Top With No Skills Whatsoever

It's hard to be surprised these days. On the web you can see an animal do just about any human activity, and you can find out just about any fact. There's not a lot of room for wonder. The solution, mid-20th century musical theatre masterminds Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows might say, is the glorious feeling a rush of power provides. The pair's Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning show How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying follows the corporate advance of J Pierrepont Finch, who self-medicates this wonderful drug. He goes from mailroom clerk to member of the World Wide Wicket Company board in just two weeks. Whether the dupes, tricks and slights involved are really worth it can be discovered when Savoyards Theatre Company stages the hit show in late September. 

As director Sheryl-Lee Secomb says, How To Succeed... is one for all those ambitious self-starters who are out to beat the system. "Finch has this book that tells him how he's going to succeed. He follows the book and enters a massive company where no one knows what anyone else is doing. 

"Thousands of people have made their way to the top without any knowledge or skills!"

"You've got all the Ivy League guys, and then there's this little guy who doesn't have any qualifications. One of the humorous lines says that none of that is necessary. Thousands of people have made their way to the top without any knowledge or skills!"

Like Loesser and Burrows' most famous musical, Guys And Dolls, How To Succeed... glorifies that good old American value written between each line of the Constitution: fake it 'til you make it. The credo does work, but plays havoc with Finch's love life. Will he have to choose between corporate glory and the super-cute secretary Rosemary Pilkington?

Some classic musical numbers punctuate Finch's journey. "There's this moment in the show," Secomb says, "where he realises all is not lost and he starts this massive number called The Brotherhood Of Man. He sells everyone this great big sizzling story about how they're all in this together and they're all flesh and blood. It's massively 'musical' and finishes with the boss' straight-laced secretary dancing on a table."  

Knowing how most of us have become experts in '60s fashion via the cable phenomenon, Mad Men, Savoyards have aimed to nail the show's styling. "We've gone with sleek and big. The early '60s were pretty cool to look at, so we've echoed that. Our props team has spent months sourcing the real deal, we've worked with a professional set designer and the costumes are true to era with that little musical-theatre twist. What's most important for me is the tightness, staying really true to that time."

The similarities between Mad Men and How To Succeed... don't stop there. Robert Morse, the actor who plays Bert Cooper in Mad Men, was the original Finch in 1961. How's that for a wormhole?

How To Succeed.. is shaping up to be another impressive instalment in Brisbane's own rocket-like theatrical rise. "It's no longer the cultural backwater the rest of Australia used to think it was," Secomb says with a laugh. "There's so much underground stuff happening, as well as big, in-ya-face shows. It's very vibrant and very busy."