Mr. Cladwell, Mr. Herman

We first meet Caldwell B. Cladwell in a scene devoted nearly solely to this single character, featuring an over-the-top, eponymously named song of self-congratulation.  This musical piece represents a clear nod to the Jerry Herman-style production number, typically an outrageously staged spectacle, with a stage-full of chorus boys and girls idolizing a featured performer.   Jerry Herman, the composer and lyricist of such stage classics as Mame, Hello Dolly, La Cage Aux Folles, and many others, perfected this form of "The-Title-of-This-Song-Is-My-Name" production number, specifically in the songs "Hello Dolly" (1964) and "Mame" (1966), both joyful musical celebrations of the optimism and cleverness of the female star.

In the present incarnation, "Mr. Cladwell" offers up a version of this production convention by gleefully celebrating Cladwell's unfettered corruption, murderous brutality, and unlimited riches, complete with kick-line, top-hat, and cane.  This dark twist on the happy Busby-Berkeley-like musical numbers may seem like a post-modern development, but in fact, this type of parody has been with us for some time.  In the 1950s and 60s, when "corporate America" first became a common phrase, the Broadway stage began to comment on the possibility of a business community run amok.

An obvious and famous example of this is the 1961 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a show that humorously spotlighted the dysfunction, nepotism, and corruption of the corporate world.  But my personal favorite example of the joyful musical expression of over-the-top capitalism is from a show you almost certainly have never heard of, even though it too, was composed by Jerry Herman, and starred Angela Lansbury (the star of Mame and Sweeney Todd).  Herman's 1969 Dear World, is the musical version of the play The Madwoman of Chaillot, by Jean Giraudoux, and tells the story of a possibly insane poor woman who plots to stop businessmen from drilling for oil in her beloved Parisian neighborhood.

Listen to In the Spring of Next Year, the opening number of Dear World, in which the businessmen are anticipating their soon-to-arrive riches, erupting into ballet-like leaping across their corporate conference tables - I can almost see Cladwell in the room:

Incidentally, Dear World, in my humble view, is a much-underrated show, and contains several of the most haunting and moving stage ballads ever written, not just by Herman, but by any 20th-century composer.  If you are a gusty mezzo looking for a unique audition song, you can't do any better than the sweepingly emotional (and surprisingly modern) I've Never Said I Love You.  And don't miss Lansbury's powerful renditions of Kiss Her Now, and I Don't Want to Know.