Got Tu Go Disco

Got Tu Go Disco is a musical with music and lyrics by Kenny Lehman, John Davis, Ray Chew, Nat Adderley, Jr., Thomas Jones, Wayne Morrison, Steve Boston, Eugene Narmore, Betty Rowland, Jerry Powell and a book by John Zodrow. It opened on Broadway on June 25, 1979, where it ran for nine previews and eight performances.[1]

Got Tu Go Disco
MusicKenny Lehman, John Davis, Ray Chew, Nat Adderley, Jr., Thomas Jones, Wayne Morrison, Steve Boston, Eugene Narmore, Betty Rowland, Jerry Powell
LyricsKenny Lehman, John Davis, Ray Chew, Nat Adderley, Jr., Thomas Jones, Wayne Morrison, Steve Boston, Eugene Narmore, Betty Rowland, Jerry Powell
BookJohn Zodrow
Productions1979 Minskoff Theatre, NYC

The New York Times summed up the story of the musical as, “A young woman named Cassette sells clothes by day and turns into the queen of a nightclub by night — think Cinderella on the dance floor.”[2]

History

Got Tu Go Disco was the brainchild of promoter and producer Jerry Brandt, who had opened several popular nightclubs and managed musical acts such as Jobriath and Carly Simon. In a New York Times article in 1979, Brandt said, “You don’t have to be a genius to know this is the coming thing … And do you know what excites me the most about this? There will be so much happening, the audience will never know what’s coming next.”[3] Brandt had a reputation for thinking big and not worrying about the details, and the result – as Steven Gaines put it in a New York magazine article about the show – was a production that included “an inexperienced staff, two unknown stars, the real-life doorman and bartender of Studio 54, two directors, three scriptwriters, three choreographers, eleven composers, a cast of 36, and a $500,000 set with a dance floor that fills with 3000 gallons of water and jackknifes toward the audience.”[4] One of those unknown stars was Irene Cara, one year before she made a splash in the movie Fame.[5]

The reviews for the show were withering. Clive Barnes in the New York Post called it “memorably unmemorable"; Douglas Watt in the Daily News wrote that it was "pure trash"; and Richard Eder summed it up in The New York Times as "not for a theater audience.”[6]

Songs

References
  1. "Got Tu Go Disco". IBDB. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  2. Vincentelli, Elisabeth (May 18, 2018). "How Broadway Keeps Trying to Get the Disco Beat". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  3. Genzlinger, Neil (January 28, 2021). "Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  4. Gaines, Steven (June 25, 1979). "Got Tu Go Hustle: Presenting the Grand Man". New York.
  5. "Irene Cara". IMDb. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  6. Filichia, Peter (February 19, 2003). "When Broadway Went Disco". TheaterMania. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
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