Review Copyright (c) 1995 by TheatreNet Enterprises
Like the production itself, the new cast album of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" puts its own spin on the Pulitzer Prize winning satire of big business. How much you enjoy that spin will depend upon how you feel about director Des McAnuff's revisionist signature, which is reflected very accurately on the recording.
By the standards of what a cast album is meant to preserve, that alone makes this "How to ..." a successful document.
On aesthetic terms ... it's a tougher call. Certainly the new album is a pleasant experience. But for those who have the original Broadway and film soundtrack recordings forever emblazoned on their brains, I suspect that the new album will seem to have been stripped of a layer of depth. For all that there is more music here, for all that Danny Troob's new orchestrations are fancier than Robert Ginzler's 1961 originals, for all that there is a happy and convincing theatrical energy to the CD, there's not much subtlety or wit to most of the proceedings. (There's self-conscious cleverness, but that's not the same thing.) The palate is one of broader strokes -- and on occasion even sounds like a labored attempt to have its own distinct personality. Whereas the original, even at its broadest, was sly, and human. And there's also the question of the new production's attempt to avoid the rampant un-PC male chauvenism of the original. That hasn't been done tastefully either: each revisionist touch reads like an apologia, drawing more attention to the problem, and sometimes -- as in the leering reworking of "A Secretary is Not a Toy" or the secretaries' reprise of the title song -- manages to be even more misogynistic than the thing it replaced.
But newcomers may be quite pleased. As typical these days, the album provides an amount of dialogue continuity that was prohibitive in the era of vinyl ... preserving Walter Cronkite's voice-overs into the bargain (for the uninitiated: Cronkite's unmistakable intonings provide the voice of "The Book" the musical's young hero depends upon for advice as he climbs the corporate ladder). And, say what one will about the supporting cast -- and there's much to say, pro and con -- Matthew Broderick has made the role of J. Pierpont Finch totally his own. On the recording as onstage.
And, of course, one cannot overlook the stirring Frank Loesser score. Under Ted Sperling's expert musical direction, it transcends the tinkering and survives the years. Almost intact.
(A historical note: There is one other official "How to Succeed..." cast album, rare and not worth paying collector's prices for; but worth a listen if you know someone who can dub it for you. It's the album of the 1962 London production which starred a very much younger, very much thinner Warren Berlinger, and also Billy de Wolfe.)
Jameson Baker is a free-lance theatre journalist. He has written CD liner notes and articles for several magazines and newspapers, among them Vanity Fair.