Back in the day – that would be 1961 – Frank (Guys and Dolls) Loesser won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Its send-up of venal corporate behaviour struck a chord with an audience just emerging from the 1950s.

The important critics were beyond ecstatic, praising everything to the skies and taking the greatest delight in what they saw as the musical’s wit and humour.

That was then. Director and choreographer Cameron Mitchell’s new production of How to Succeed feels trapped in what is now a distant, irrecoverable past, unable to access what made it so exciting.

Max McDonald, Zachary Webster, Kaeng Chan, Kye Hall and Taye Grant in How to Succeed in Business … Photo © John McRae

The dark arts of vaulting ambition, sexism and nepotism embedded in the plot cry out for a contemporary perspective. Mitchell sticks with the 1960s, neatly evoked in Christine Mutton’s costume designs and Dominic Foffani’s set.

How to Succeed charts the career of J. Pierrepont Finch (Jake Speer) as he plots his way from window cleaner to boardroom supremo at the World Wide Wicket Company. He is...