Boy George’s Taboo Flops in the US
Boy George is going home. Taboo, the controversial musical based on his life in the Eighties and his relationship with the famed Eighties performance artist and fashion revolutionary Leigh Bowery, is folding after less than three months on Broadway.
The show was transported to New York by US chatshow host Rosie O’Donnell, who is thought to have invested at least $10 million in the project. The New York Times branded it “a disastrously overcrowded tableau”, however, while USA Today said it was “a delightful experience if you left after the first act”. Yesterday a spokesman for Boy George said he was disappointed by the fate of the show, which is thought to have made a loss of $10 million: “It’s all a bit sudden and George is obviously very upset.” The DJ and Culture Club frontman was forced to remove a joke about Madonna during the show’s London run, after she objected to a take-off of her Vogue hit single, using the lyrics “Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, that Madonna, dyes her hair“. “I thought she was having a joke,” said Boy George at the time. “I used to think she was an icon but she’s more an eyesore to me now. It’s all so inoffensive – it’s a tiny send-up. It’s a shame because the song was funny but she obviously has no sense of humour.”
Madonna visited friend Rosie O’donnel at the Broadway premiere of “Taboo”
Source: British Vogue