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How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying [Decca Broadway B0015645]
I warmly praised the Daniel Radcliffe revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying when it opened in March, calling the enterprise "bright and irrepressible" and opining that the star "handily demonstrates how to succeed in musical comedy."

Does this mean that I find it comparable to the original production, which I saw when I was nine and remains one of three musicals which more or less formed my theatrical tastes? No, not at all; this new How to Succeed is not as startlingly good as the show that opened on 46th Street in 1961. But I don't think that's a fair or proper test for a revival to be submitted to, unless you're reviving a show that was first produced less than ten years back. I choose to consider revivals from the vantage point of a present-day theatregoer, sitting there tomorrow night or next month.

I myself said "yes!" to this How to Succeed. The deftly witty musical that the boys contrived back in 1961, which received seven Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, comes through. Abe's satirical jokebook plays like a marvel, garnering continuous and deserved laughter from the audience. Frank's score, every moment of it, is a delight. Loesser, who loved nothing more than writing big, booming songs, took the job with misgivings; he instantly realized that the needs of the show would restrict him to carefully-crafted comic novelty songs. No room for any Loesser ballads that might show up on the Hit Parade and the charts — back at a time when show tunes did, indeed, still show up on the charts.

	Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette
	photo by Ari Mintz

That the sterling nature of How to Succeed is evident in revival is — oddly enough — not a given. I well remember sitting there in 1995 at the first Broadway revival of the show, starring Matthew Broderick, thinking — where are the jokes? How can they put one of the two Frank Loesser-Abe Burrows musicals on a stage without any discernable humor in evidence? Don't the director and the producers realize this show is supposed to be funny? How on earth can a production of How to Succeed be not funny?

This was, not coincidentally, my precise reaction to the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls, from the same director as the 1995 How to Succeed. And also not coincidentally, I had something of the same reaction to the 2010 revival of Promises, Promises, from the director/choreographer and producers of this present How to Succeed — which was, at least, far better than the 1995 How to Succeed or the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls.

The present How to Succeed, though, heartily succeeds on stage. As good as the original, with an exceptional cast, wonderfully bright Fosse choreography of a sort we haven't seen since the master's style turned dark with Pippin (and the film version of Cabaret), and whimsical scenery seemingly drawn with cartoonist's ink? No. But does the revival present the authors' work in a way that should make your average theatregoer, who is not necessarily a musical theatre historian, respond enthusiastically? Yes, in my opinion.

Which puts me at something of a loss in discussing the original cast recording of this new How to Succeed. The revival works in the theatre as described, and there is no sense in asking someone to compare what you can see on stage today with a production that closed in March 1965. (You can get a sense of the original production from the 1967 motion picture, but only a sense.) The cast album is different, though; you can very easily compare today's recording with that of yesteryear.

Now let us readily agree that a stage musical is a living thing; just because a group of people — including the authors — decided to do it one way back then, doesn't necessarily mean that's how it needs to be done now. South Pacific, we saw at Lincoln Center in 2008, benefited from sticking closely to the original; the 1998 Cabaret, however, benefited significantly from changes in material, structure and viewpoint made by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall.

	Rose Hemingway
	photo by Ari Mintz

Let's talk practically. When you revive a musical under today's economic strictures, you most likely will need to reduce the orchestra size; in the case of How to Succeed, from 27 to 14. (South Pacific retained 30 pieces, but that production came from a non-profit theatre with sufficient funding to make it possible.) There are two ways to accomplish this reduced instrumentation. You can take the original orchestrations — which in the case of How to Succeed are phenomenally good — and carefully pare them down, which in practical terms means retaining most of the reed and brass writing at the expense of the strings (whose drastically diminished numbers you augment with synth).

This was the course taken for the 2009 Roundabout revival of Bye, Bye, Birdie — a prime example of a revival that somehow subverted every good idea that the creators had when they wrote the thing. Jonathan Tunick's reduced orchestration of Birdie, paradoxically, retained the colors and magic of the original; the one praiseworthy element of that revival, as it turned out.

The alternative is to start from scratch, allowing the present-day creative staff to have the show arranged and orchestrated to their own taste (in the same way that Loesser, Burrows, and Fosse were able to get precisely what they wanted). Should the choreographer intend to throw out the old dance arrangements and fashion new ones, you'll naturally need a significant amount of new orchestrations — even if you otherwise closely follow the originals.

And so, presumably, the decision was made to have Doug Besterman reorchestrate the show, giving it a brand new sound. The producers, in their liner notes, go so far as to spend five full paragraphs discussing the musical approach to the new Succeed. To sum it up, they decided "to think in terms of a muscular jazz ensemble rather than a symphonic sound"; found inspiration in the work of 1950s arranger Marty Paich and his Dek-tette recordings; purposely gave World Wide Wickets the musical flavor of Spacely Sprockets in Hanna-Barbera land, where George Jetson used to work (and no, I'm not making this up); and added the sound of Esquivel and his "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music," along with Henry Mancini and Martin Denny's faux Polynesian "Exotica."

Me, I prefer the sound of Robert Ginzler and Elliot Lawrence, who worked to Frank's specifications and came up with a dazzling set of orchestrations that perfectly complemented not only the score but the entire production. It was Ginzler who put that typewriter in the pit for "A Secretary Is Not a Toy," plus the off-pitch kazoos to fill in for electric shavers in "I Believe in You" — two whimsical touches which Loesser seemed to love, and which are gone.

Yes, I find the revival to be perfectly enjoyable, even with these new orchestrations; most audience members are oblivious to this sort of thing, and why carp if the show succeeds? But that's in the theatre. Sit that same audience member down with the two cast albums — which is fair game — and the difference is startlingly apparent. You need only compare the overtures; Ginzler's takes off like a rocket, Besterman's doesn't.

Before moving on, let's have a word for Daniel Radcliffe. The fellow is absolutely fine. No, he's not Bobby Morse; but Bobby Morse isn't likely to play the role today. (I would make another trip to the Hirschfeld immediately if Morse were to step into J.B. Biggley's shoes. Or even if he came in to play the supporting twin roles of Twimble and Womper.) Keep in mind that Morse had a great advantage, going in; Burrows, who had worked with him previously, crafted Bobby's scenes to specifically fit his talents — which is why those asides, sheepish grins, et al came so naturally.

Radcliffe didn't walk into the rehearsal room with the meticulously developed stage presence of Morse, but hey — he's only 21. When Morse was 21, he was struggling to get work on soap operas; Radcliffe, already, has starred in the West End and on Broadway in Equus, and also made some movies. Radcliffe maybe does not measure up to Morse in the role. The question is, though: does his performance bring the full value of the role and the show to present-day theatregoers? I say that Mr. Radcliffe pulls it off exceedingly well. Let us hope that now that he has given musical comedy a chance, he will feel at home on Broadway and return to us periodically.