The best thing about the new musical This Ain't No Disco is that whenever I hear the title I start to sing one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, "Life During Wartime."
And that might be the only good thing about it.
Writing a musical about Studio 54 (and the Mudd Club) and New York of the 1970s is a herculean task. Stephen Trask, Rick Elice, and Peter Yankowitz would've been smarter to streamline their plot and focus on the club(s) themselves, make the whole show about owner Steve Rubell and the debauchery of not just the scene but the city. Instead we get an incredibly cliched and sanitized musical about not just the clubs and Rubell but also two young people trying to get famous (although I'm not really sure that's even what they want), drug use, self-harm, incest/rape, a character that is called The Artist (just refer to him as Andy Warhol, for cryin' out loud, we all know who he is supposed to be), someone named Binky, and a trans character, for no reason other than the fact that trans issues are the hot button one of the day so why the hell not.
The whole thing is squeaky clean and sexless, and incredibly heterosexual even though Chad, the male protagonist, is gay, even though this is Studio 54. The cast is full of young, attractive, thin people who just look like they got dressed up for a 70s costume party. Nobody has any authenticity, and the whole thing plays like a theater camp production. They're all so shiny and smiley; I wouldn't let them into my club either. Surely they could've cast some older actors with some body diversity.
This Ain't No Disco might have one of the worst books I've seen in my nearly twenty years of theater-going. It takes about twenty minutes to realize who the main characters are, and even longer to figure out what their motivations are, even though I'm still not quite clear. Apparently Chad is an artist who is also gay and works at Studio 54 but we never really see him do any art or talk about wanting to be famous. Sammy, who has a child after being raped by her stepfather, who also cuts herself, also wants to be famous, I guess, I don't know, we know she's some sort of poet. I can buy that both of them want more than what life has given them but aspirations of fame and success, well, that comes out of nowhere. They both go to Studio 54 (even though Sammy's a punk because she wears a hat and is from Queens, like The Ramones, and only goes to the club because it's on her way to the subway home from work) and The Artist decides he's going to make Sammy a pop star (even though she just does some form of slam poetry for him) and Binky, who is a publicist I think, is going to push Chad, which culminates in a failed sham wedding at the club that inexplicably destroys both Binky and Chad. Are you still with me? This ain't no disco, and this ain't no good show. There's also Theo Stockman as Rubell taking big, huge bites out of the scenery, a DA who is first seen partying at Studio 54 and then wants to close the place down, and the trans man (which really, it's a cis female actress who draws on a mustache and is like "I want to be a man now") and his girlfriend, who do nothing to advance the plot and sing a song that includes a line along the lines of "I don't care what chromosome you have." My mouth was on the floor at that moment.
And did I mention that a good deal of the spoken dialogue is in rhyming couplets? Halting, obvious rhymes we can all see a mile away.
Oh, and the camp is everywhere to be found. Binky, who transforms into a Joan Rivers-type with her own talk show, at least I think that's what happens, sings a song that rips off American Psycho (the horror!) about how she's not done yet and plays the clarinet with a cigarette in her mouth. Steve Rubell leads the ensemble in a campy Egypt-inspired production number (if there's any historical context we don't know it). The DA gives his assistant(?) a blow job during one song, and poor Eddie Cooper has to have his head buried in another actor's lap the whole time. Sammy ODs because well, of course she does. That's what happens when you don't pay heed to the perils of fame.
And the biggest problem is that they're all sincere about everything. It's like nobody on stage has any idea how campy everything is. If you're going to do a show this awful and campy, embrace it. This show needs to be dirty, sexier, campier, and well, yes, better. It's shocking how pedestrian the score is, coming from Trask who has written of the best rock scores of all time, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Every song sounds the same, nothing is memorable. Oh, wait, I take that back. There's a song that repeats the phrase "making it up as we go along" over and over again that has yet to leave my head since I saw the show. Not a good look when the show comes off as everyone making it up as they go along. The lyrics are amateurish, going for easy, obvious rhymes. They're shallow and do nothing to develop plot or character.
Oh, and did I mention The Artist, who we really know nothing about, is given a big, emotional eleven o'clock number?
I usually try to find ways that a show can improve itself but I think This Ain't No Disco isn't salvageable. There's nothing good enough about it to even try. This ain't no good show.
And that might be the only good thing about it.
Writing a musical about Studio 54 (and the Mudd Club) and New York of the 1970s is a herculean task. Stephen Trask, Rick Elice, and Peter Yankowitz would've been smarter to streamline their plot and focus on the club(s) themselves, make the whole show about owner Steve Rubell and the debauchery of not just the scene but the city. Instead we get an incredibly cliched and sanitized musical about not just the clubs and Rubell but also two young people trying to get famous (although I'm not really sure that's even what they want), drug use, self-harm, incest/rape, a character that is called The Artist (just refer to him as Andy Warhol, for cryin' out loud, we all know who he is supposed to be), someone named Binky, and a trans character, for no reason other than the fact that trans issues are the hot button one of the day so why the hell not.
The whole thing is squeaky clean and sexless, and incredibly heterosexual even though Chad, the male protagonist, is gay, even though this is Studio 54. The cast is full of young, attractive, thin people who just look like they got dressed up for a 70s costume party. Nobody has any authenticity, and the whole thing plays like a theater camp production. They're all so shiny and smiley; I wouldn't let them into my club either. Surely they could've cast some older actors with some body diversity.
This Ain't No Disco might have one of the worst books I've seen in my nearly twenty years of theater-going. It takes about twenty minutes to realize who the main characters are, and even longer to figure out what their motivations are, even though I'm still not quite clear. Apparently Chad is an artist who is also gay and works at Studio 54 but we never really see him do any art or talk about wanting to be famous. Sammy, who has a child after being raped by her stepfather, who also cuts herself, also wants to be famous, I guess, I don't know, we know she's some sort of poet. I can buy that both of them want more than what life has given them but aspirations of fame and success, well, that comes out of nowhere. They both go to Studio 54 (even though Sammy's a punk because she wears a hat and is from Queens, like The Ramones, and only goes to the club because it's on her way to the subway home from work) and The Artist decides he's going to make Sammy a pop star (even though she just does some form of slam poetry for him) and Binky, who is a publicist I think, is going to push Chad, which culminates in a failed sham wedding at the club that inexplicably destroys both Binky and Chad. Are you still with me? This ain't no disco, and this ain't no good show. There's also Theo Stockman as Rubell taking big, huge bites out of the scenery, a DA who is first seen partying at Studio 54 and then wants to close the place down, and the trans man (which really, it's a cis female actress who draws on a mustache and is like "I want to be a man now") and his girlfriend, who do nothing to advance the plot and sing a song that includes a line along the lines of "I don't care what chromosome you have." My mouth was on the floor at that moment.
And did I mention that a good deal of the spoken dialogue is in rhyming couplets? Halting, obvious rhymes we can all see a mile away.
Oh, and the camp is everywhere to be found. Binky, who transforms into a Joan Rivers-type with her own talk show, at least I think that's what happens, sings a song that rips off American Psycho (the horror!) about how she's not done yet and plays the clarinet with a cigarette in her mouth. Steve Rubell leads the ensemble in a campy Egypt-inspired production number (if there's any historical context we don't know it). The DA gives his assistant(?) a blow job during one song, and poor Eddie Cooper has to have his head buried in another actor's lap the whole time. Sammy ODs because well, of course she does. That's what happens when you don't pay heed to the perils of fame.
And the biggest problem is that they're all sincere about everything. It's like nobody on stage has any idea how campy everything is. If you're going to do a show this awful and campy, embrace it. This show needs to be dirty, sexier, campier, and well, yes, better. It's shocking how pedestrian the score is, coming from Trask who has written of the best rock scores of all time, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Every song sounds the same, nothing is memorable. Oh, wait, I take that back. There's a song that repeats the phrase "making it up as we go along" over and over again that has yet to leave my head since I saw the show. Not a good look when the show comes off as everyone making it up as they go along. The lyrics are amateurish, going for easy, obvious rhymes. They're shallow and do nothing to develop plot or character.
Oh, and did I mention The Artist, who we really know nothing about, is given a big, emotional eleven o'clock number?
I usually try to find ways that a show can improve itself but I think This Ain't No Disco isn't salvageable. There's nothing good enough about it to even try. This ain't no good show.
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