First look images are released for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which opens tonight at Southwark Playhouse and includes Tracie Bennett in the male role of J.B. Biggley, President of the World Wide Wicket Company and Gabrielle Friedman as J. Pierrepont Finch.
A comic gem that took Broadway by storm in 1961, winning both the Tony Award for Best Musical and a Pulitzer Prize. It boasts an exhilarating score by Frank Loesser – one of America’s great composer/lyricists, also responsible for ‘Guys & Dolls’ (currently a massive hit at the Bridge Theatre) – including ‘I Believe in You’, ‘Brotherhood of Man’ and ‘The Company Way’.
A satire of big business and all it holds sacred, it follows the rise of J. Pierrepont Finch, who uses a little handbook called How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (voiced in the Southwark production by Michelle Visage of ‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race’ fame) to climb the corporate ladder from lowly window washer to high-powered executive, tackling such familiar but potent dangers as the aggressively compliant “company man”, the office party, backstabbing co-workers, caffeine addiction and, of course, true love.
