Moving up in the business world can be a daunting task, but the Pioneer Players put on a big-laugh performance of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying during the first and second weekend of April to show how ‘easy’ it can be to make it all the way to the top. The musical is a story of a young man working his way up the business ladder from the very bottom until he made it to the top. It was a performance that had audience members following “The Company Way” all the way to the final curtain.

Audience members found the show to be a great break in their weekend studies, jobs and anything else they had going on. The musical was about two and a half hours and audience members were engaged through it all.

“I really enjoyed the humor and the satire that ran throughout the entire musical. I was just an overall fun performance that had me engaged and laughing,” senior civil engineering major Sarah Willie said. “My favorite part was all of the talented singing and dancing. They did a really great job.”

The actors, actresses and crew members who were all a part of making this show happen. They all put in numerous hours to make this performance happen and worked for months on the choreography, blocking of scenes and learning the music and lines. This allowed the actors to build relationships with each other, as well as the characters they were portraying.

“My favorite part was learning the choreography to ‘Paris Original.’ It was fun and upbeat and it was funny to see all of the female characters coming out in the same dress, thinking that they would be the only ones in it,” senior theater major Cody Lindau said. Lindau also played the role of Benjamin Berton Daniel Ovington.

Individuals in the musical come from all types of academic backgrounds; many of the performers were theater majors, but there was also a mix of other majors and minors throughout the cast and crew. As it turns out, the lead actor, Ross Spadaro, who played J. Pierrepont Finch is a junior business administration major with an emphasis in marketing, sales and communication. Spadaro also has a minor in musical theater and it is something that he wants to keep in his life.

“I don’t want to give theater up, it is something that I want to keep going with,” Spadaro said. “Though the part was intimidating, with all of the dancing and singing and having so many lines, I was ready for the challenge.”

Spadaro has been a part of other shows here at UW-Platteville, including Company, Paul and The Drowsy Chaperone. He has also taken part in KIDS in Wisconsin which “gave [him] a feel of what a real theater job was like,” Spadaro said.