If you were brainstorming stage musicals that would be a natural fit for working in a lot of young people, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” probably wouldn’t make the list. Yet the show is nonetheless this year’s choice for the Burns Park Players, and director Mike Mosallam has come up with creative ways to not only work in about 100 students, but also 70 additional parents, teachers, staff members, and neighbors who wanted to be part of the show.

“It’s a terrific show in terms of the type of group that the Burns Park Players is, and it has great parts and a great score,” said Mosallam. “ … It’s also the 50th anniversary of the show, … and the centennial of Frank Loesser’s birth, so we’re bookending that occasion with his two greatest shows.”

Loesser, of course, provided the music and lyrics for the Tony Award-winning “How to Succeed,” as well as “Guys and Dolls,” last year’s BPP production (also directed by Mosallam). “How To Succeed”’s book, meanwhile, was written by Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert, and Abe Burrows.

The show tells the story of window washer J. Pierpoint Finch, who, with the help of a business book called “How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying,” lands a job in a corporate mailroom and quickly rises through the ranks of power. But when his major advertising campaign goes awry, his precarious, ill-gotten position and all that came with it (i.e., the love of secretary Rosemary Pilkington) is endangered.

So where do kids fit into a story about corporate culture?

“We had a long discussions about it,” said Mosallam. “Early on, the creative team decided that we were going to … incorporate them into various scenes as though they were just very short workers, taking coffee breaks and gossiping with everyone else. I mean, most of us have worked at one time or another in an office culture, and in some ways, it’s just not very different than elementary school.”

The celebrated show premiered on Broadway in 1961 — a very different time in terms of social norms and attitudes. (Since then, a revival starring Matthew Broderick and Megan Mullally hit Broadway in 1995, and a new production starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, is scheduled to open in March.) And given the involvement of so many young kids in BPP’s production, how did Mosallam approach potentially provocative moments like the number, “A Secretary is Not a Toy”?

“I think in all of the Burns Park shows — last year, for instance, there were the gamblers in ‘Guys and Dolls’ — parents do a really good job of discussing the show and the themes of the show with their kids,” said Mosallam. “And with ‘Mad Men’ being as popular as it is, it’s a subject that’s not far from people’s thoughts and consciousness. So it’s a good time to talk about women’s rights, how women were treated then, and how far we’ve come. As Burns Park parents who are teaching girls to be forward-looking, independent thinkers, … (the show) may even enhance those conversations.”

“How to Succeed” boasts an age range of 6-91, and its featured performers include Caroline Huntoon, Jeffrey Post, Ben Cohen, Lisa Harris, Fred Hall, Aviva Simonte, Talia Glass, and Joel Swanson. Proceeds from the show will once again benefit performing arts students and programs in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. (Since BPP’s inception in 1984, the group has contributed more than $245,000 to AAPS students all over the district.)

Of course, wrangling a 170 person cast is no small matter. Mosallam scheduled music rehearsals, and did some preliminary staging, in November and December, but the bulk of the work has been concentrated into the five weeks leading up to “How to Succeed”’s performance run. That means Mosallam’s in the thick of the busiest, most hectic time of preparation, but his affection for the show seems to provide him with the necessary energy.

“When the show was first written, … it was really poking fun at how businesses and business cultures were run, and now, it’s become this tongue-in-cheek thing,” said Mosallam. “We can celebrate how progressive we’ve become, … but we can also look at it through this lens and remember that that’s just how things were done then. … It’s no surprise that the (musical) was a Pulitzer Prize winner, based on Shepherd Mead’s book about office culture. Even then, we were thinking about how satirical our work lives are.”