“The tone-deaf, cliché-clogged rock opera...From the joyless frenzy of its opening number...’This Ain’t No Disco’ wears its retributive grimness like a suffocating, Lycra spandex shroud...Screeches like a repressive, single-message scold. Its electronic music repeats key phrases with an insistence that makes you long for the jolly melodic variety of Philip Glass...Such monotony fails to evoke the differently monotonous pop hits of disco...’This Ain’t No Disco’ just ain’t no fun.”
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“Tresnjak’s production adds to the sense of fiasco with Brown’s busy but formless choreography and Sherwood’s you-are-nowhere set which at one point wobbles scarily when someone dances on it, providing the show’s single moment of genuine suspense. The cast is attractive and the music has drive, but every good thing about the show is strangled by inanities...If Rubell and Warhol aren’t rolling in their graves, they surely are rolling their eyes.”
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“While there’s plenty to look at, there’s seldom much of substance to hold on to. And despite a host of strongly sung performances, what’s there often feels flattened by a high-energy but unmemorable score and a storyline anchored by cliché...Struggles to get us invested in its cast...A lot of plot, but the problem is that we don’t care much about any of it...Sacrifices the potential effectiveness of small moments to a heady dependence on flashing lights and forward motion.”
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“Lyrics from a song in the new musical ‘This Ain’t No Disco’...will make us yearn for the golden age of disco...This new musical is just as dumb as that dopey lyric...The costumes are imitative, the performances are caricatures, and the choreography is awful...All energy and no style...The repetitive music doesn’t lean into the changing trends, while the choreography just re-works the same old steps for tired feet...’This ain’t no disco’, to be sure.”
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“Despite the impressive pedigree of talent...’This Ain't No Disco’ seriously flounders...The show's main problem is its diffuse, unfocused book. Overstuffed with characters and subplots that we never care about...Tresnjak's staging and Brown's choreography prove more busy than exciting...A handful of terrific numbers, but most of the songs are unmemorable...Lyrics are sometimes jaw-dropping, but not in a good way...Lacks the right moves to give it future life.”
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“Hot mess of a musical...As manically unfocused as a club queen on a coke bender, it is at once thematically overstuffed and emotionally barren...Plenty of driving melodies that get our toes tapping for a minute or two before ceding ground to the next track. By the end of the evening, we're hard-pressed to remember any of them. The same could be said of the scattered book...In lieu of precise direction, the cast reverts to clichéd sensationalism...As edgy as a pair of safety scissors.”
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"It's hard to believe that three book writers labored to create this cadre of cartoon figures...The score has its moments...'This Ain't No Disco' moves quickly, possibly to prevent unwanted thoughts from arising about the book's general implausibility...Missing from the production is the sense of exhilaration -- of getting away with something -- that was the main allure of places like Studio 54. The young, gifted cast gives it their all...Overall, 'This Ain't No Disco' perplexes."
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“A hot mess...’This Ain't No Disco’ is dead on arrival...The clunky book...is a tired collection of clichés...A sung-through pop musical, and a lousy one at that...Tresnjak has directed 'Disco' with a feverish desperation that can't hide the fact he's trying to spin straw into gold without much success...One wishes the cast would apply the same energy they give to Brown's choreography to the lyrics they're singing...Lazy enunciation with the bad sound mixing results in much being unintelligible."
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