OF ALL PEOPLE Andy Warhol (Will Connolly) sings the 11 o'clock number in "This Ain't No Disco." The script just calls the character the Artist, presumably for legal reasons.
OH, DEAR. BEN BRANTLEY hated it. In his July 25 review in The New York Times, he called it a "tone-deaf, cliché-clogged rock opera" and concluded his opinion with "Mostly 'This Ain't No Disco' just ain't no fun." That is not the way Ben normally talks.
Let's be fair. Brantley, the longtime chief theater critic of The Times, is right. The show, directed by Darko Tresnjak, doesn't work. But during its two and a half hours at the Linda Gross Theater, there are some fabulous moments and aspects and people onstage. And I always like to believe that the creators will try again. Press Nights will now pretend to be a dramaturg.
Dear Stephen Trask & Peter Yanowitz (music, lyrics and book) and Rick Elice (book):
(1) A musical about the last year of Studio 54 is a nifty idea, but we're not sure who(m) to identify with. Why not just make the Artist the focus?
Yes. We know you have to call him the Artist. Probably Andy Warhol's estate would be all over your ass if you used his name. (And yet you have a busboy say, "I don't turn tricks anymore, Mr. Gere"?) But the character is a famous New York-based creative type who wears a weird, bone-straight white wig, hangs out at Studio 54 a lot and when he sees a talented person he wants to -- help? exploit? -- he invites her to a place that sounds a lot like the Factory.
I loved Will Connolly in this role. Probably a lot more than I'd have liked the real Warhol (1928-87, in photo, hiding his jawline) if I'd ever met him. The closest I ever got to the real guy was spotting him on the street on the Upper East Side. I stayed on my side of the street. I was afraid.
I loved Artist/Connolly with his sunglasses on, and I loved it when he took them off. I loved his absolute confidence when he disagreed with everyone. Steve Rubell hated the young female singer's look and that awful hat? "I rather like the hat," the Artist says casually. His opinion overrules Rubell's and gets Sammy (Samantha Marie Ware), a self-described punk, into the club.
Most, most, most of all, I loved Artist/Connolly's big number near the end. He raises his voice in "One Night, Terpsichore."
"Stop listening, and you will hear/Stop thinking, and you will know/Stop wanting, and you will have ... Stop going to be, and you will be."
If only you guys hadn't followed this with another scene and another song. Here's an idea: If you need the "here's how the wounded people came through and lived on" epilogue, do it first. Then let the Artist sing.
(2) Let us feel our love for Binky. She's got an anthem!
MEAN GIRL Chilina Kennedy as Binky, a publicist who just won't give up. Kennedy was, until very recently, playing Carole King in "Beautiful."
Chilina Kennedy is so delicious as Binky, described in the script as "a pushy Jewish publicist who is down on her luck," that I find it hard to imagine her as the sweet-songwriter-next-door Carole King in the Broadway show "Beautiful." But that's where she was until recently.
Binky is determined to succeed by making someone else famous. And she chooses Chad (Peter LaPrade), who starts out as a busboy at 54 (which is better than what he had been doing: hustling). Binky changes his name to Rake, tries to sell him as an important graffiti artist and, when that doesn't work, she suggests a Studio 54 wedding. To her. Yes, he's gay, but P.R. is P.R.
Most important, Binky sings the show's true anthem: "I'm Not Done Yet." Granted, it's a shameless knockoff of "I'm Still Here" from "Follies." But as much as we Sondheimites love that song, it is increasingly hard to identify with a character whose youth was shaped by "Herbert and J. Edgar Hoo-oo-ver." One of Binky's celebrity lyrics is "New York City didn't drop dead/Son of Sam, you can give me head." That moves us up a few decades at least.
But when Ms. Kennedy appears in Act II, as the entrepreneur behind Binky TV, her '80s hair is hideous. And the people behind the message of "This Is No Disco" clearly want us to feel nothing but disdain.
(3) Rethink Steve Rubell.
Rubell, co-owner of Studio 54, is a love-to-hate-him antihero, and Theo Stockman (in photo, with LePrade in his lap) makes him a delicious guilty pleasure. His song, with semi-naked busboys as backup singers, "You're Like a Son to Me," is richly funny.
Steve is clearly skimming money from the club and deserves to go to prison -- which is what happens in the play and what happened in real life. Yet I don't really hate him. And I don't take any pleasure in seeing him sent away. (The real Steve Rubell died almost a decade later, in 1989.)
(4) Keep the D.A. In fact, give him a raise.
BIBLICAL Eddie Cooper as the D.A. in "This Ain't No Disco."
I was living in New York when the whole Studio 54 thing went down, when Rubell and his partner (Ian Schrager, who is conveniently out of the country during the show's action) were convicted of tax evasion and 54 was shut down, yet I have no idea who the character known as the D.A. is supposed to be.
Some people say the writers were inspired by Roy Cohn (better known today as Donald Trump's creepy role model). The real guy who handled the case was an assistant United States attorney named Peter Sudler, but I don't think it was him. He.
WHAT'S IN THE DAILY NEWS? From left, Roy Cohn, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell read about themselves.
Anyway, Eddie Cooper plays the D.A. here as a loyal 54 patron who enjoys snorting a line of coke or two and stroking any hunky young busboy who comes within touching distance. That's amusing. But when the D.A. sings, it's biblical.
At one point, Cooper performs from one of the boxes on the upper level of Jason Sherwood's club set (keep the sets!), and I thought I'd been transported into an Old Testament story and that the temple walls were going to come tumbling down. His big number, about making a name for himself by betraying his buddies, is called "Break It Down."
(4) Do something, anything, with our heroes, Sammy and Chad (a.k.a. Rake).
'I RATHER LIKE THE HAT' Samantha Marie Ware as Sammy, who has talent but would rather make it big at the Mudd Club than at 54.
This happens sometimes in morality tales, and it's never helpful. Our heroes are the least interesting people in the mix. Chad should be sympathetic. His parents reject him because he's gay (the copy of Blue Boy under his bed was a dead giveaway), and he runs away to the city to start a new life. He's young and hot but unfortunately not too bright.
Sammy is a single mom, on her own. She got pregnant after her mother's boyfriend sexually abused her, but now she worships her 5-year-old son. She has real talent, and the powerful people recognize that, but climbing the show-biz-success ladder and taking care of a child is exhausting. No, Sammy, don't take those uppers that they offer you! Nooooooooooo!
(5) Start over with the choreography.
The biggest surprise in the show? The choreography is by Camille A. Brown, who did the soul-stirring dances for "Once on This Island." What happened?
(6) Get mildly stoned and look at the lyrics again.
I kept hearing snatches of great lyrics in the middle of what were usually less-than-great songs. "He grabbed a book off the shelf/And read me 'Song of Myself'" is from Chad's song about his night with Steve Rubell, which Steve doesn't even remember.
You, Stephen Trask, who wrote "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," should know better. When you've got a great line, repeat it. Again and again. We wouldn't want you to miss your shot.
PS: "Go ahead, watch/It's quite a crotch" is not a great lyric. But the song it comes from, "Baryshnikov's Coat," is a keeper.
IN SUMMARY
I went to a Sunday matinee of "This Ain't No Disco," and when it ended I applauded everyone's hard work and shuffled out onto sunny West 20th Street. What had I just learned?
That a bad, greedy, egotistical guy started a nightclub that attracted desperate, soulless young people (one song's lyrics "Let me in! Let me sin!") and a shiny group of rich celebrities. Everybody took a lot of drugs and had a lot of unprotected hook-up sex, and then it all ended.
It was fun to hear the '70s names in the lyrics (Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Liza Minnelli, Mary Boone, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall -- it was the year Mick divorced Bianca). But I thought of my own friends, dead now, who happily spent their nights and early mornings at 54. They deserve a more empathetic memorial. They were only pretending to be soulless.
"This Ain't No Disco," Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street; atlantictheater.org. 2 hours 30 minutes. Limited run. Closes on Aug. 12.