Secretaries a go-go to Church Hill with EMT

Mar 17 2013 | By More

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opens this week

Jennifer Good, Andra Roston Keay and Emily Goad in a publicity shot for EMT's How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Photo © Andy Phillipson/ Edinburgh Music Theatre

Jennifer Good, Andra Roston Keay and Emily Goad in a publicity shot for EMT’s How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Photo © Andy Phillipson/ Edinburgh Music Theatre

By Thom Dibdin

Edinburgh Music Theatre is returning to the 60s with its new production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which opens at the Church Hill theatre on Tuesday.

The musical is written by Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows  – the team behind Guys and Dolls – and opened on Broadway in 1961. It was made into a film in 1967.

Michael Richardson, who is directing his sixth production for EMT, told the Annals: “As a company, we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves and try something new for our audience. We have certainly all risen to the challenge of doing a character driven dance show with How to Succeed.

“It is a complete change from recent productions, but is equally as exciting. Not only is the show great fun, it’s also of its time – your tongue will firmly be in your cheek. And not to mention the tap dancing!”

The production follows the darkness of last year’s Sweeney Todd, 2011’s intense Rent, and the 80s pop-tastic Footloose in 2010. If this is the decade of Hair, which the company produced in 2009, the style has ratehr more in common with the glamour of TV’s Mad Men than the Summer of Love.

Buy the soundtrack:

The musical follows young window washer J. Pierrepont Finch who, with the help of the book entitled How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, rises to become chairman of the board of the World Wide Wicket Company.

The cast includes characters such as J.B. Biggley, the boss of the company, his attractive but dim-witted mistress Hedy LaRue, lazy, arrogant, and nepotism-minded nephew Bud Frump and the secretary Rosemary Pilkington – who falls in love with Finch.

The result, according to EMT is a “comedic battle of the sexes for centre-stage, complete with executive washrooms, flannel-suited businessmen, and hip-swinging secretaries in a comedy fable of management dreams and unavoidable office dalliances.” Musical numbers include Brotherhood of Man, A Secretary is Not a Toy and the title song, How to Succeed.

How to Succed in Business Without Really Trying, Church Hill Theatre, Tue 19-Sat 23 March, 2013. Daily, 7.30pm (Sat mat 2.30pm).
Full details: www.edinburghtheatre.co.uk

ENDS

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