This Ain’t No Disco Will Get Long-Awaited Cast Recording

One of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is getting an all-star cast album. Audiences would flee at intermission, but I saw it three times ... Was this on anyone's radar?!

https://playbill.com/article/this-aint-no-disco-will-get-long-awaited-cast-recording

Center Stage Records will release This Ain’t No Disco: World Premiere Recording – Songs from the Musical later this month.

Set to be released in digital and streaming formats August 21, the musical is by Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and Peter Yanowitz (The Wallflowers). The album is produced by Trask, Yanowitz, and Diane Mayer, with Van Dean serving as executive producers, and Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley as co-producers.

Part rock opera, part impressionist tone poem set in the nightclubs and art world of 1979 New York City, This Ain’t No Disco interweaves the stories of strivers, dreamers, and drifters searching for their place at Studio 54 and Mudd Club, the art scene, and downtown lofts. In their uptown/downtown quest for revelry and kinship, this disparate group, in different stages of becoming and falling apart, find themselves and each other in a city on the verge of a massive cultural shift. The musical debuted at Atlantic Theater Company in 2018, directed by Darko Tresnjak and choregraphed by Camille A. Brown. This upcoming album will be the musical's first.

Will Connolly, Eddie Cooper, Lulu Fall, Chilina Kennedy, and Theo Stockman from the musical's original Off-Broadway cast will reprise their work on the album, newly joined by Ryan Cassata, Adam Chanler-Berat, Lilli Cooper, Austin Crute, Lena Hall, Taylor Hanson, Ryan Jarman, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Sean Ono Lennon, John Cameron Mitchell, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Robert Schwartzman, Jake Shears, Miriam Shor, and Brandon Uranowitz.

This is one of the roughest shows I’ve had to wait to flee at intermission (myself and 4 others). Totally bizarre to record it at this point, unless they’re trying to exhume the corpse.

The one song I liked from it (“Fun”) was performed at Bryant Park and they seem to have scrubbed it from YouTube, while the original actor in the role seems also to have been recast for the recording. Odd.

I wonder what circumstances lead to this getting recorded and how we can get more flops recorded.

nasty_khakis said: "I remember disliking this so much and was confused by what it was and what it was even trying to be but thinking the three gogo boy/bartenders were all really hot and they all went on to have nice careers so far-- Tony D'Alelio, John-Michael Lyles, and Ian Paget."




username checks out lol

TotallyEffed said: "nasty_khakis said: "I remember disliking this so much and was confused by what it was and what it was even trying to be but thinking the three gogo boy/bartenders were all really hot and they all went on to have nice careers so far-- Tony D'Alelio, John-Michael Lyles, and Ian Paget."




username checks out lol"

HAHA well I had to rest my eyes somewhere in all that mess!

Kad said: "And as far as it being“part rock opera, part impressionist tone poem”- that neither describes the show nor does it actually make any sense as a description for anything."

Funny enough, that’s the exact description the Atlantic used when they produced it in 2018.

rosscoe(au) said: "When was this produced on stage?"

2018 at Atlantic.

nasty_khakis said: "TotallyEffed said: "nasty_khakis said: "I remember disliking this so much and was confused by what it was and what it was even trying to be but thinking the three gogo boy/bartenders were all really hot and they all went on to have nice careers so far-- Tony D'Alelio, John-Michael Lyles, and Ian Paget."




username checks out lol"

HAHA well I had to rest my eyes somewhere in all that mess!"



Do what you need to do, baby! 😂

Well, I guess this will be available in about 4 hours on the west coast…

Looking forward to it…I think.

sassylash3s said: "My favorite moment of this show was when Chilina Kennedy played the clarinet out of one side of her mouth while smoking a cigarette from the other. I’ll never forget it. It wasn’t a good musical but I am genuinely intrigued at the chance to explore the score again."

Deeply disappointed to report that the clarinet/cigarette number didn't make the recording. Thankfully someone recorded the Broadway in Bryant Park performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3LTkmtAPXY

sassylash3s said: "My favorite moment of this show was when Chilina Kennedy played the clarinet out of one side of her mouth while smoking a cigarette from the other. I’ll never forget it. It wasn’t a good musical but I am genuinely intrigued at the chance to explore the score again."

So glad I’m not the only one who remembers this moment. It was basically the only time I laughed in an otherwise joyless show. It was just so stupid in a show that had absolutely no focus or emotion and I thought “Finally, something so bad that it’s good.”


And then I had to sit thru the rest.

This cast album is not what I expected, and that was to revisit Theo Stockman's Steve Rubell. While disappointed on that front, he sounds great covering the male lead's intro number. There's a good chunk of material missing though, in addition to the aforementioned "I'm Not Done Yet," but it's nice to add an official recording to my playlist. Some of these covers by the "all-star" cast assembled are a lot of fun, tonally incohesive and good luck to a newbie trying to figure out the plot, but fun!

Updated On: 8/22/26 at 11:58 AM

johnnybravo said: "The show was great. The people on this board are the reason most theater sucks. Just a mean-spirited, insular clique of the dumbest rubes acting out their high-school trauma."

The show was raked across the coals by critics and rejected by audiences. The folks here weren’t outliers. In fact, looking at the contemporaneous thread about the show, a lot of us were excited going in and many members tried really hard to like it and find things to like about it.