Cocktail Party Fact: How to Succeed began life as a series of articles in Playboy magazine, was then turned into a book, then a musical, and finally, a movie musical.

Here’s the Plot: This savage musical satire traces the meteoric rise of J. Pierrepont Finch (”Ponty”) from window washer to Chairman of the Board of World Wide Wickets. Ponty has a book called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which offers a simple step-by-step process for moving up the corporate ladder without any genuine effort or talent. The show draws a corporate world so complicated, corrupt, and large that it’s possible to lie and cheat your way to the top without ever getting caught. It’s this detail that makes the story of How to Succeed possible. Finch learns from the book that his greatest advantage is the knowledge of what a lumbering giant the modern corporation is. Everyone at World Wide Wickets is a monster, an incompetent, or both, all trying to get what they want no matter how much they step on others in the process. Finch is in many ways just as big a monster as the executives he tramples, but because those he dupes are unprincipled jerks, we enjoy seei ng them get what we think they deserve. Finch is amoral and unethical, but we still love watching his triumphs as he methodically makes his way to the top.

How to Succeed trades on dozens of Big Business stereotypes. The appropriately named J.B. Biggley is the vague but demanding boss, complete with incompetent nephew Bud Frump and a buxom bimbo for a mistress, Hedy LaRue. The other executives are all over-eager sycophants with no minds of their own, whose secretaries actually run the company. The corporate world Finch finds is a back-biting playground where only the slimiest survive. Like the earlier musical satire Of Thee I Sing, it was one of only a very few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Memorable Melodies: “The Company Way,” “Coffee Break,” “A Secretary is Not a Toy,” “Been a Long Day,” “I Believe in You” (Finch’s love song to himself), “The Brotherhood of Man”

Vital Statistics: The show’s script was first written by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, but the script was such a mess, Abe Burrows was called in to write an entirely new script, even though the producers were contractually obligated to still give credit to Weinstock and Gilbert. The music and lyrics are by Frank Loesser, and the show was originally directed on Broadway by Abe Burrows. It opened October 14, 1961 and ran 1,417 performances. It won seven Tony awards including Best Musical, as well as the Pulitzer Prize. The show was heavily revised, the satire softened, songs cut, and all the bite taken out for a 1995 revival that would appeal to “family” audiences.

Why See It: How to Succeed (in its original form) is one of the most brilliantly wicked satires ever put on stage, consistently funny and outrageous, and punctuated by one of the jazziest, most electrifying scores in the musical theatre. It’s a long show (about two and a half hours ideally) and a hard one to direct, so a mediocre production can seem endless (and they sometimes are, clocking in at three hours or more). But a solid, intelligent production can be one of the funniest evenings you’ve ever spent in a theatre.