Word: taboo
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DIED. DONALD GRIFFIN, 88, animal behaviorist who was considered the father of animal-consciousness research; in Lexington, Mass. His 1976 book, The Question of Animal Awareness, revolutionized the study of animal behavior by arguing that animals have the capacity for thought and reason, a notion that was previously taboo...
...There?s enough wrong with Taboo - a messy book and a less-than-ideal production - that probably no one in good conscience can make a case for Scenario 1. Still, that doesn?t mean the howling critics who are gleefully writing their Scenario 2 endings are treating the show any more fairly. ?Not since Urban Cowboy has Broadway been littered with so much smoldering wreckage,? announced the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post?s critic found the show so awful that it drove him into ?questioning the entire institution of Broadway.? The New York Times? Ben Brantley gave the show...
...Just how Cats, the most successful musical in Broadway history (and an adventurous one in its day) has come to be a synonym for mass-audience schlock is the subject for another day. The real question is why the critics are so eager to turn Taboo into Rosie O?Donnell?s personal Titanic. I liked Taboo when I saw it in London a year and a half ago. And I liked it on Broadway, though it is much changed - in some ways for the better and some for the worse...
...real triumph of Taboo, however, is O'Dowd's music and lyrics, among the best I?ve heard on Broadway in the past few seasons. (With the exception of two old hits, Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, all the songs are new.) The show opens with an infectious cabaret number that launches the show as effectively as the Wilkomen number in Cabaret: "I'm known/ In all the wrong places / I'm one of those faces / You'll never forget." The score ranges from Brecht-Weill for the age of irony (Ich Bin Kunst...
...real problem with Taboo, for most critics, is the unspoken one: Rosie O?Donnell. The comedian and talk-show queen may well have been over her head. But let's give her some credit. She saw a show in London that was at the edge of what Broadway audiences would accept, and she gambled her own money to try to make it fly. She ran up against, not only some sizable creative hurdles, but a Broadway establishment that secretly resents an outsider (from TV, no less!) who presumes she can show the old guard...