The stylish clothes help Millie to feel that she’ll soon get what she wants: husband, house, a mortgage, a baby – with the first-named providing the second and fourth items while he pays off the third. And where would a young miss be more likely to meet such a prize than in a large and thriving company? Millie gives us the impression that food, shelter and clothing are all tied for second place behind the first-prize winner: an eligible executive whom she can charm and claim.

Gold diggers usually inspire our distrust if not disgust. A director can, however, avoid the issue by casting an actress with wide-eyed naiveté. Millie must seem misguided rather than craven. In essence, we must inherently know more about her than she knows about herself. We infer that try as she might to marry solely for money, she’s at heart “a nice girl” who’ll fall in love for the right reasons when Mr. Right comes along.

He does, in the guise of Jimmy, who can barely spare a penny to weigh himself on a scale that sits outside a drug store. But because Jimmy is so pleasant and appealing, Millie can’t help caring for him. In the end, our so-called “thoroughly modern” Millie will turn out to be refreshingly old-fashioned. What she’ll mine from all that gold digging is Jimmy’s golden personality.

Or so it seems as Act One is coming to a close. But quite often in musical comedy, exhilaration is followed by deep despair. For example, after Maria decides to return to the von Trapps and claim the Captain, she immediately learns he’s been engaged to Elsa. Once Annie realizes that she’ll never find her parents and embraces Oliver Warbucks as her daddy, in come Mr. and Mrs. Mudge to reclaim her.

The real reason that Mrs. Meers took the job is to have easy access to young women who will replenish the white slavery ring she’s running. Actually, that sounds pretty serious, so that may be one reason why Scanlan and his composer and co-lyricist Jeanine Tesori wanted to treat the abduction issue in a farcical way: by having Mrs. Meers speak pidgin Chinese.

As Scanlan wrote in his script, “Mrs. Meers should be encouraged to embrace the offensiveness of her politically incorrect rendering of Asian, confident in the knowledge that, when contrasted with the actual Asian characters we meet later on, her depiction of a hateful stereotype will be busted as inauthentic and absurd.”

Interesting: in the film that had been made 35 years earlier, Beatrice Lillie didn’t play Mrs. Meers with any kind of accent at all. She simply spoke. And that was a less politically sensitive time, too.

Mrs. Meers’ henchmen Bun Foo and Ching Ho are those “actual Asian characters we meet later.” Cast actors who speak as if English were their second language with, of course, Chinese their first. They must deliver their dialogue at a lickety-split pace that leaves no doubt that they were born in The People’s Republic. (MTI cheerfully provides an audio instructional guide to correct pronunciation.)

What Bun Foo and Ching Ho say to each other, then, must be translated for the audience. “The Broadway production employed supertitles on a screen hung over the stage,” say the authors. “There are other ways to handle the translation, from high-tech to handheld signs.”

Here’s betting, however, that without much difficulty you’ll locate high-tech wizards who’ll gladly create projections for you. See if you can find people who have never even seen the inside of a theater; that way, once you get them inside, they will find – as the rest of us have – that there’s no place else on earth that they would rather be.

While Jimmy easily shucked his high-born ways, his sister did not. Notice that she’s referred to as Miss Dorothy. Anyone who simply uses her first name when talking with her will be immediately reprimanded. Finding the right actress to play Miss Dorothy (Carnegie Mellon Vanderbilt Van Hossmere, if you please) should be next to effortless in these days when over-pampered children are not in short supply. Every organization will have at least one young woman who possesses this character’s intense sense of entitlement.

What both Miss Dorothy and Millie must do is tap well. Scanlan retained a gimmick from the movie: that the hotel’s elevator doesn’t work unless its users bang on the floor – which, in a musical, translates to tapping.

Where, you’re asking, am I going to get an elevator? Scanlan and Tesori feel your pain. “There are other ways to render it,” they say, before suggesting “a square of light on the floor with a floor indicator overhead. The authors welcome thinking outside the box,” they add, arguably unaware that they’d made a pun. “But in no event should the conceit of the tap dancing elevator be eliminated.” ‘Nuff said.

As for Muzzy – played in the film by the Oscar-nominated Carol Channing -- the stage production cast an African-American actress in the role of this madcap party giver. While of course a stepmother can be any race, color or creed, one could effectively argue that having a black Muzzy keeps even the sharpest of theatergoers from guessing her secret identity. Cast someone with great authority, because Scanlan describes Muzzy as “Pearl Bailey crossed with Josephine Baker, and a bigger star than either of them.”

Speaking of stars, Thoroughly Modern Millie gives not one, not two, not three but four young women the chance to shine. While of course Millie is the lead, the other three parts are so rich that any early jealousy and dissention will be mitigated as soon as the other three actresses take a good look at all they have to do.

Finally, have your set designer make your New York look like New York. The 1967 movie was shot on stage sets that had streets far too immaculate and pristinely paved to resemble Manhattan. This advice also holds for your lighting designer. In the film, the warm Hollywood sun was much too much in evidence. On those old Manhattan streets, let the warmth thoroughly come from Millie, her supporting cast and the nice message about true love being its own reward.

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