A Disco Disaster (with heart)
By RAVEN SNOOK
Why the delay? According to Rudetsky, a performer/writer/musician/radio host/hardcore theatre fanboy, the answer is simple. “I literally have ADD,” he says. “I can’t do anything without a deadline!”
And then… nothing. Until 2011, that is, when Rudetsky was invited to write a show for a benefit and decided to revisit the idea. Since Geraci was busy, Rudetsky turned to Jack Plotnick, his old friend and former comedy partner. “He asked me, ‘How far have you gotten?’ And I said, ‘Well, I haven’t actually written anything.’ Then I told him we only had two months. Jack opened up his laptop and typed: Scene I: Chad appears onstage and the “Hot Stuff” vamp is heard. And I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is actually happening.'”
Rudetsky and Plotnick had a tough creative road ahead of them, and not just because of the time crunch. Since the idea had originally been hatched, jukebox musicals had become a much-maligned genre, and thanks in large part to the Fringe Festival, which helped spawn the likes of <i>Silence!</i> and <i>Poseidon!</i>, musical movie parodies were no longer so novel. For the show to work, it needed to be much more than a collection of retro pop-culture references and familiar tunes.<!–more–>
Luckily, as much as the duo worshiped ’70s entertainment (Rudetsky jokes that Plotnick was perfect for the project because “his entire apartment is decorated as if he were a 10-year-old in the ’70s”), they loved musical theatre even more. “We both come from a performing background with a deep love for classic musicals,” Rudetsky says. “We wanted to pay homage to them more than do a ten-minute Carol Burnett sketch. In disaster movies, there are all of these diverse people who come together. We realized early on that the disaster had to teach everybody a lesson. We wanted to make sure that every character grew and changed.”
Disaster movie aficionados will undoubtedly recognize certain tropes, and anyone who’s ever listened to the radio should know many of the songs. However, the bulk of Disaster!‘s humor isn’t predicated on preexisting knowledge. “The jokes really come from the characters and the situations,” Plotnick says. “They aren’t all references or puns. When the old couple offers to help Jackie [the lounge singer] search for her missing kids, and she deadpans, ‘Oh no thanks, I’ll be running,’ it always gets a big laugh. It’s humor that’s coming from something real.”
One of the cleverest aspects of Disaster! is the way it gives old songs completely new contexts. Without giving too much away, let’s just say the chorus of “Hot Stuff” has a triple meaning, depending on who’s singing it; “Hooked on a Feeling” and “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” both take on clever literal connotations; and the explanation for why Ted sings “whoa-oh-oh” in “Feelings” always gets a huge laugh.
“We didn’t change any of the lyrics,” Rudetsky says. “There are certain jukebox musicals where you have to ignore 50 percent of the lyrics, so we didn’t want to use songs that didn’t serve the story. Sometimes the words are so shockingly perfect, younger people [who aren’t familiar with the songs] will come to the show and think they were written for the show!”
Plotnick and Rudetsky both say their use of “Feelings” encapsulates the show’s purpose. “At first when Jack suggested it, I thought, it’s so cheesy,” Rudetsky remembers. “But now I see it’s what the whole show is about. All of the main characters ignore their feelings and are then forced to embrace them in the end. The way we use the song, it keeps going back and forth between hilarity and genuine emotion.”
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Raven Snook writes about theatre for Time Out New York and has contributed arts and entertainment articles to The Village Voice, the New York Post, TV Guide, and others.
Photo by Jeremy Daniel