The musical "Disaster!," opening Friday at Trumbull New Theatre in Niles, spoofs the disaster movies of the 1970s with a soundtrack filled with top 40 hits from the same decade. (Staff photo/Andy Gray)

Trumbull New Theatre’s next show will be a “Disaster!”

That’s not an early review; it’s a musical inspired by the disaster movies of the 1970s and the songs that filled top 40 radio that same decade. After a one-week delay following a COVID-19 outbreak in the cast, “Disaster!”opens Friday for a two-weekend run.

When the show created by Seth Rudetsky and Drew Geraci opened on Broadway in 2016, it had a cast filled with Broadway stars (Roger Bart, Adam Pascal, Faith Prince, Rachel York, etc.) and received the kind of review from the New York Times that usually guarantees a lengthy run. But after getting only one Tony nomination in a crowded new musical field (“Hamilton,” “Waitress” and “School of Rock” also opened that season), it closed after 72 performances.

Al McKinnon, who is directing the TNT production, got to see it during that two-month run.

“I was blown away by this all-star cast, so many great actors from so many hit Broadway shows,” McKinnon said. “That led me to look up Seth Rudetsky, who is one heck of a character … I became obsessed with him. When I first saw it, I knew it was the sort of show that would work great at TNT because the audience will get the jokes, and they’ll know the songs.”

The movie is set in 1979 at the opening of New York City’s first floating casino and discotheque, but the eclectic group of attendees must deal with a series of natural disasters, everything from earthquakes to tidal waves to fire to killer rats in a plot that combines elements from “The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Towering Inferno,” “Jaws,” “Ben” and other box-office hits.

The story is woven around a mix of pop and disco hits, including “Saturday Night,” “Without You,” “I Am Woman,” “Mockingbird,” “Knock on Wood,” “Three Times a Lady,” “Sky High,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” “Hooked on a Feeling” and “I Will Survive.”

That doesn’t mean those songs are delivered in a traditional manor.

“The first song in the show is ‘Hot Stuff,’ the old Donna Summer standard,” McKinnon said. “It’s reworked so three different characters all have a different interpretation of ‘hot stuff.’ One is looking for boiling water, one is looking for hot food and one is looking to meet somebody hot that night. That’s what I love about it. It starts right off the bat showing you they’re going to reinterpret these songs.”

To educate the younger cast members, McKinnon said he “nerded out” and created a 40-question trivia quiz for a holiday party last December after the show was cast. McKinnon didn’t need to do much research, for the quiz or to direct the musical.

“The movies it’s really based on are ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and ‘Towering Inferno’ and I’ve seen them so many time I could probably quote them verbatim,” he said.

When asked why he thought those Irwin Allen-produced disaster films were so popular at the time, McKinnon said, “I think people just want to see disasters and not live them. And it doesn’t hurt to have all-star casts, which most of those movies definitely had. If you have Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in the same movie, that’s pretty good. And Fred Astaire too.”

The cast at TNT features Ron Aulet, Harmon Andrews, Jacob Glosser, Elizabeth Huff, Caitlin Overton, Alex Lucas, James Matig, Trudi Herrholtz, Jackie Shannon, Emma Wason, Lois Schneider, David Schneider, Popee Conrad-McKinnon, Bob Spain, Jenny Long, Alan Purdum, Kat Fitzgerald, Nina Miller, Kaitlyn Shaffer, Amy Burd, Madison Knepper, Deb Lavelle, Kathy Purdum, Allyson Wenger, Jen Dagati and McKinnon.

Wason is doing double duty as music director, and Tom Hitmar designed the set.

McKinnon said he is enjoying directing his first show since doing “Seussical” at Kent State University at Trumbull about 14 years ago and getting the opportunity to direct his daughter, Popee, for the first time.

“I have a great cast and a fantastic crew,” he said. “Ron Aulet has been doing double duty, being in the show and almost building the entire set and coming up with a lot of the special effects.”