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Supreme reign

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Here you have George O?Dowd, known in his Culture Club days as Boy George, playing the late icon and London trendsetter Leigh Bowery, while a gifted young actor, Euan Morton, plays O?Dowd in his heyday a couple of decades back, when he more or less reigned over the chaotic British club scene.
The show?s title, ?Taboo,? doesn?t refer to any sort of moral judgment but rather to the name of a fictitious stage equivalent of the once-popular establishments where Boy George and the Culture Club held forth in the 1980s.
Whatever else it is or isn?t, ?Taboo? is one of the few shows in recent years to have been put together by a single producer, in this case the redoubtable Rosie O?Donnell, with nominal support from a partner, Adam Kenwright, the son of the notorious London showman Bill Kenwright.
The last time a Broadway musical was produced by a single financial entity was probably ?Ballroom,? a short-lived flop that the legendary Michael Bennett, the creator of ?A Chorus Line,? put on with his own money.
What most of the major critics, who landed on this show with both feet, neglected to mention about ?Taboo? is that, above and beyond Morton?s excellent work as the young Boy George, the show is inoffensive, fast-moving and populated by an unusually appealing cast of performers, most of them extremely young.
The production?s schizophrenia stems from its dual narrative streams, with the story of Leigh Bowery never making meaningful contact with the tale of Boy George?s younger days. It must be a most peculiar experience for O?Dowd, now bald, paunchy and, at 42, affably middle-aged, to be attempting to present a credible Bowery on the same stage dominated for much of the evening by Morton?s skilled doppelganger of a performance as his younger self.
Previously presented in London with a book by London playwright and screenwriter Mark Davies, the Broadway incarnation has a new libretto by actor and prolific playwright Charles Busch, author of, among other works, the hit comedy ?The Tale of the Allergist?s Wife.?
Most of Busch?s plays fall into the camp or cult categories and were created, for the most part, for audiences that know him and love him as a female impersonator, assuming the leading roles in his comedies and melodramas, most of which he has written as vehicles to showcase his own particular abilities.
The nimble Busch hasn?t solved the problems of ?Taboo,? and perhaps none could. As things stand, the two plotlines run along parallel tracks, all too often interrupting and delaying each other, as opposed to offering anything resembling a unified narrative.
The schizoid nature of the endeavor is reflected in the program information stating that the ?music and lyrics? are the work of Boy George, while Leigh Bowery is played by George O?Dowd, whose face, laden with clown-like make-up, beams out from the Playbill page devoted to photographs of the cast.
The score, to whomever the credit is given, is thin except possibly, and probably unsurprisingly, to audience members able to remember the hits racked up by the Culture Club which existed as a ?supergroup? for just four years, starting in 1982 and ending in 1986. When the group was formed, O?Dowd was known primarily as a flamboyant disc jockey. His partners in the endeavor were another DJ, Michael Craig, and former Adam and the Ants drummer John Moss.
Like many another once-popular and short-lived group, the Mamas and the Papas being a reasonable American equivalent, the Culture Club is remembered for a small cluster of numbers.
New York audiences appear to react in particular to ?Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? and ?Karma Chameleon,? while much of the rest of the score seems to pass without making an impression.
The production, directed by Christopher Renshaw, a London-based theater artist who shares the ?original concept by? program credit with Boy George, doesn?t break any new ground and, in fact, at times threatens to come apart at the seams.
Renshaw, well regarded for his work on the world?s opera stages, was responsible for the 1996 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein?s ?The King and I,? a production starring first Donna Murphy and then Faith Prince.
The level of performance is somewhat uneven. Raul Esparza stands out as the outrageous Philip Salon, an actual participant in the revels, who is used here as a sort of master of ceremonies, in a role paralleling, to an extent, the one he played in the just-closed revival of ?Cabaret? for several months during that production?s lengthy run.
Jeffrey Carlson, who scored last season as the confused son in Edward Albee?s Broadway success ?The Goat or Who is Sylvia?? makes a powerful impression as George?s jealous, cross-dressing ?best friend? Marilyn.
As a Bowery hanger-on Nicola, a woman who eventually plays a role in the fashion-making club regular?s life, Sarah Uriarte Berry is memorable.
However, George O?Dowd, making a rather late entrance in the show, seems vaguely at sea as Leigh Bowery, which is probably a result of his lack of experience in anything resembling conventional stage-acting.
The most solidly legitimate performance is given by Euan Morton as the youthful boy George, a role that got him an Olivier nomination when the show played London. Apart from his astonishing resemblance to the Boy George of memory, he manages to come up with a sympathetic and nuanced interpretation of the part.
?Taboo,? despite everything is enjoyable in its own rather tacky, garish way.

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