TABOO [DRG 94773]
Boy George's Taboo was, shall we say, one of the more unusual Broadway musicals of recent memory. Taboo, produced by Rosie O'Donnell, opened at the Plymouth last November and closed after a stormy 100 performances. The show had its vociferous fans — most of Broadway's recent multi-million dollar flops nowadays have vociferous fans, don't they? — but Taboo alienated most of the theatregoers it attracted. Long before opening night, the graffiti was on the wall.

When Ms. O'Donnell produces a show it gets produced, all right; regardless of the artistic outcome, she certainly stood by Taboo long past the moment when most Broadway producers would have thrown up their hands and headed for the Hamptons. Now she has brought us a cast recording of the show, which some theatregoers might automatically place in the thanks but-no-thanks category. And not without reason. I, for one, was unmoved by Taboo in the theatre. (Unlike some similarly disastrous musicals, it didn't send me moving for the door.) Must I really listen to the score once more, I wondered? How far would I get before I reached for the remote?

Yes, some of the Taboo songs are as noisy and abrasive as remembered from the theatre, and without much apparent point. But the CD reveals, rather surprisingly, that there is a heart, and a musical art, to Taboo. What seemed hopeless in the theatre has attractions on CD. O'Donnell faced a continuous round of second-guessing from many in the industry; they were more than glad to see someone come into the field waving million-dollar bills, but wondered why she picked this.

The answer, my friends, is on the CD. The best of it was so smothered in hyper-theatrical ambience that it was lost on stage, to my ears at least. But there is some good writing here, and some true emotions effectively translated into dramatic song. We have all heard numerous musicals that were just as bad on disc as on stage, which starts one wondering why they bothered. Taboo has been relegated to the failure-heap, yes; but the CD tells us that there was a show there, at least.

Raul Esparza leads the pack, on the CD as he did at the Plymouth, with another bravura performance. I have yet to see him do anything onstage that was less than remarkable. Some day, I suppose, he will walk out on stage and appear to be ordinary — but no doubt with a trick up his sleeve. Euan Morton brings some humanity to the character of Boy George, who is quite a character. He is well-supported by Cary Shields, Jeffrey Carlson, Liz McCartney and the others.

So chalk up the cast album of Taboo as a surprise, with more of interest than you might expect. And if I wasn't impressed by the show, I was certainly impressed by the producer. Imagine the job she will do, someday, when she has more workable material.