Home Entertainment Revival Of 1960’s Hit Musical “Promises, Promises” keeps its Promises

Revival Of 1960’s Hit Musical “Promises, Promises” keeps its Promises

Shenise Nunez, Kayley Stevens and Cara McMorrow whip up their colleagues at an office Christmas Party (Photos by George Wentzler)

By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for  SouthFloridaReporter.com, Oct. 2, 2015 – The story of a morally compromised young man who becomes the enabler for serial adulterers, solely to advance his career path in big city corporate America, does not sound like prime material for a musical comedy.

But Promises, Promises parlayed an up-to-the-moment pop score for 1968, a witty and insightful script, frenetic choreography that caught the zeitgeist of the time, and some deceptively subtle performances to become a wildly-popular hit just as the social fabric of the country was in transition.

Broward Stage Door’s earnest intriguing revival does not sidestep that this is a period piece that satirized the period in question, especially the problematic ethical laxity of its hero.

What it is still hard to analyze fully, hours after the curtain has gone down, is exactly how we “enlightened” 21st Century denizens should process the sexist, objectifying attitudes that were de rigeur a half-century ago – and to a degree, how far we have or haven’t come in those 50 years.

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