Posted: 7/9/18 at 12:16am
Posted: 7/9/18 at 12:47am
Their characters would have made sense if it was a "slice of life in Studio 54" kind of thing, but then it wasn't.
Posted: 7/9/18 at 12:52am
Posted: 7/9/18 at 9:12pm
A few friends and I saw the workshop of this last summer. We have spent the last year wondering if we were nuts to think this was a complete and utter disaster. I remember driving home to the city after and going over every jaw-droppingly inane choice made throughout the show. We were stunned that Stephen ****ing Trask could have been behind this mess.
We went back and saw it a week ago hoping it had improved. Except for a few minor details, nothing in the book had changed. We still had questions.
· Why don’t I leave this show knowing more about Studio 54 than when I walked in?
· Why do they need to pile not one, not two but three movie of the week issues onto the main female character? She’s a cutter, a drug addict and has an incest rape baby. Could they think of no other way to make a woman interesting?
· Why is a black hat with a brim considered punk?
· Why does half (and only half ) of the spoken dialogue rhyme?
· Why, out of allllllll the spots in 1980 New York City that might have been a punk chick’s favorite spot (and my god the choices they could have made!), did they choose THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY?
· Why does the main male character need to inherit money from his father in order to buy a pink suit? Why can’t he just make or find or be given or create the pink suit that gets him noticed and discovered? This might actually give him some agency and make him a more interesting character.
· Why, when asked to sing by the artist, does the punk chick do spoken word poetry?
· Why is a punk girl doing spoken word poetry?
· Why does her spoken word poetry make the artist think she could be a great pop singer?
· Why do they call her punk at all? There is absolutely nothing punk about her character. Does anyone working on this show know what punk is? Especially what it was in the 70s and 80s?
· Why, out of the two main characters, does the Andy Warhol type artist choose to mentor the pop singing girl to promote over the young, pretty gay boy?
· Why does Binky, who clearly wants to be traditionally famous, choose to mentor the young pretty gay boy over the pop singing girl?
· Why does a featured character announce they are trans in a 2 minute scene then never address any aspect of it again?
· Why does a neon sign shorting out and saying FAKE instead of RAKE cause the main character to run out of the room in shame and return to tricking? If this incident is such big news, why doesn’t it make him even more famous?
· Why is there a song whose lyrics are 90% “we make it up as we go along”? And how in the world did the man who wrote Wig in Box, Wicked Little Town and Midnight Radio produce this dreck?
· Why does an ensemble actor get a full solo number in the last 30 minutes of the show?
· Why did the writers feel compelled to insert themselves into the show in a protracted scene that in no way furthers the story and is literally a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing?
I agree with some others that the artist’s 11o’clock number is the best in the show. Imagine a story that actually built to that. Instead, he just walks out onto the stage and sings it like he’s this week’s musical guest on SNL.
There is a great musical to be made about Studio 54, but dear lord this is not it. To make this work they would have to throw out 90% of the book and all but IMO 4 or 5 songs, and I’m being generous. Maybe the issue is that Trask is a composer, not a book writer. Most of the issue lies there and if he didn’t have to focus on the book he could spend more time on the music and hone the lyrics to the level which we know he can achieve.
I’m disheartened, though, at how little has changed since the workshop a year ago. Surely they received some honest feedback from SOMEONE and apparently chose to stay the course. It doesn’t give me hope there will be any major changes in a few weeks of previews.
Updated On: 7/9/18 at 09:12 PM
Posted: 7/9/18 at 10:06pm
Posted: 7/9/18 at 11:55pm
I'm beyond curious to see how this is reviewed.
Posted: 7/11/18 at 6:57pm
Posted: 7/12/18 at 8:40am
Posted: 7/12/18 at 10:11am
Posted: 7/12/18 at 10:26am
LizzieCurry said: "Amazing. Scripps, I am CACKLING."
+1
Posted: 7/12/18 at 11:08am
Have an extra $25 ticket for tonight 7/12 8pm if anyone interested...
Posted: 7/12/18 at 9:28pm
Posted: 7/12/18 at 9:30pm
steven22 said: "I’m here now and so far I am really enjoying it. Yeah, there are some plot issues - but the cast and music are good. "
I’m here as well and I agree 100%. Hoping for a recording of this score
Posted: 7/12/18 at 10:48pm
Posted: 7/13/18 at 12:31pm
I saw this again last night (I could't pass up a Back25 ticket that turned out to be front row). The show is moving at a better clip than it did a week ago (I can't believe I am writing these words and admitting I saw this twice within the span of 7 days, but here I am) and I could hear and understand everyone on stage so kudos to the soundboard operator. I was really struck by not only the show's lack of focus, but tone. Rhyming couplets, Sammy talking about her darkness inside that will blackout the sun, and then Binky playing a clarinet with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. It's so schizophrenic that I really don't know how I am supposed to react. Not much has been done to address the questions and criticisms that have been raised on this thread, though I did notice that in the Studio 54 scenes there are cast members wearing sandwich boards that state what theme night it is, etc. During the "cash-in, cash-out and skim" phone call, we see a few of those VIP room boys putting rolls of cash in a trash bag who mime putting it in the ceiling. At least there is now an attempt to visualize plot points! Or maybe my memory is shot and I didn't remember that staging from last week!
Poor Sammy. Please pick one after school special conflict and run with it (what a wonderfully expressive voice she has though). Please cut the lesbian/trans couple, they have no conflict outside of not being shown in a respectable art gallery and are just dull. There has to be another way to bring everyone together at the end without them. Post-hospital, the number between Chad and Sammy grinds the show to a hault. And isn't it true that there is no such thing as bad publicity? So why would Chad have to return to turning tricks if Binky was such a PR whiz? Oh forget it, just make the whole show about Rubell and Studio 54 and call it a day.
Updated On: 7/15/18 at 12:31 PM
Posted: 7/14/18 at 11:43am
Well... I saw half of this last night. It is truly a train wreck. The cast is great but hot boys and great voices can only go so far when the material is this poor. My friends and I all had moments where we looked agape at each other.
Just... wildly misconceived at basically every level. The music is not evocative of the period, except when it is. The script is in Seussian couplets, except when it’s not. The scaffolding-and-signage set doesn’t evoke the sleazy grandeur of 54 or the grungy thrill of ‘79-80 NYC (coupled with pointless projections).
The inclusion of Andy Warhol would be totally fine and appropriate, but coyly referring to him only as “The Artist” even in dialogue (?!) and putting him in an almost-but-not Warhol wig, as if giving yourself plausible deniability, is absurd, particularly when dozens of other period celebrities are namechecked.
The whole thing fails to hold up to scrutiny even as you watch it.
Honestly, watch a Sean Cody video while playing Donna Summer hits. It’ll be a better experience.
Updated On: 7/14/18 at 11:43 AM
Posted: 7/20/18 at 1:33am
"Honestly, watch a Sean Cody video while playing Donna Summer hits. It’ll be a better experience."
I'm crying laughing at that. I've never walked out of a show in my life and I thought this would be an excellent show to have one or three gin and tonics before and just be blissfully drunk throughout. Huge mistake and I'm happy I left during intermission because I was getting a migraine. I don't know how a rock opera about disco could feel so joyless, but maybe it's because there was a nerve-shredding dissonance between the style of music I was hearing and the fun I thought I was supposed to be seeing in a neon-drenched disco setting. It's just.... nightmarishly bad, and I have a huge soft spot for good bad shows! All I needed was just one blissed-out, drug-fueled, fun scene. The first time we actually enter it, I wanted Studio 54 to burst off the stage in a fast paced and cataclysmic fashion and I wanted to feel every beat of it but instead it felt like Studio 54 drunkly ambled into the room and just sort of vomited out a half-baked King Tut number.
I've never seen a production this expensive-looking be this bad and I am literally shocked. I have no idea who this is for or why anyone should see it. I thought a lot about the film The Last Days of Disco, which is so excellent because it manages to be both blissfully full of music and dancing, and also deeply humanistic.
I'll be singing Hedwig songs til I'm six feet under, but I thought every song in this was unfathomably lame and I'm.... just at a total loss for words about this whole thing. I truly think it's highway robbery to be charging people money to see this and I really wonder if there's anyone on the producer team who genuinely thinks this is great. This is the worst thing I've paid to see at a well-respected theater and I'm just in shock.
Updated On: 7/20/18 at 01:33 AM
Posted: 7/20/18 at 8:39am
izzio2 said: "This is the worst thing I've paid to see at a well-respected theater."
You need to get out more.
Posted: 7/20/18 at 8:54am
haterobics said: "izzio2 said: "This is the worst thing I've paid to see at a well-respected theater."
You need to get out more."
Have you seen this show yet? It is stunningly bad.
Posted: 7/20/18 at 9:20am
SDV said: "Have you seen this show yet? It is stunningly bad."
Yes, but it wouldn't even make my top ten of the worst things I've seen onstage...
Posted: 7/20/18 at 9:25am
Oh, come on. I thought this bordered "so bad it's good" territory. There are some diamonds (okay, two diamonds) in the rough as far as the score goes -- the rest of it doesn't make me want to scream (see: Warpaint) but they are mostly forgettable. I think I realized how cliche the whole thing was going to be after the first act, so when Act II started and something ridiculous (that clarinet with that cigarette), nonsensical (the fall-out of the art show), out of character (the artist's song), or maybe a little too on the nose for a character (oh Sammy, she's poppin pills now!) happened, I was able to just laugh at it. Like I said earlier, most bad shows are boring. This one is bizarre because it's simultaneously all over the place and cliche. It's trying so hard to be "camp" but it's failing pretty bad.
Not exactly the review the creators are looking for, but I stand by it. When a friend of mine went to see it recently and we compared notes, we realized we had been laughing about it for almost an hour.
Posted: 7/20/18 at 9:32am
Posted: 7/20/18 at 11:20am
Did anyone read the article, The Gritty Club at the Heart of 'This Ain't No Disco' that ran in the NYTimes this week? It's an interesting piece as this scene was before my time, but it's false advertising as none of what is discussed in the article is on stage at the Atlantic!
As I watched the show last week, I was looking at the costumes and making note of how similar a dress was to a hand-me-down from my mother from when she would do the Saturday Night Fever thing with my father in the 70s. And that's pretty much the show isn't it? A bunch of a kids wearing hand-me-downs from their parent's closet.
Posted: 7/20/18 at 11:26am
Posted: 7/20/18 at 11:28am
I did read that article! It's a great piece but... yeah, the connection to Ain't No Disco is tenuous at best. Also, it's weird it doesn't mention that literally half of the show is about Studio 54.
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