January 16, 2004 -- THE agent for a member of the "Taboo" creative team sat alone in Rosie O'Donnell's spacious office at 1500 Broadway.
He'd been summoned for a meeting with the novice Broadway producer because he'd had the temerity to point out her failure to honor a key point in her contract with his client.
As he sat contemplating the large bowl of candy corn she kept on her desk - handfuls of which she often consumed during production meetings - O'Donnell burst into the room and pointed a finger at him.
"When the book on 'Taboo' is written," she thundered, "you will be the villain!"
Then she stormed out, leaving him alone with the candy corn.
Well, it's time to write the book (or at least a farewell column) on "Taboo," a sad fiasco of a musical that will play its final performance Feb. 8.
But there are no "villains" in this story, really - just a volatile, distracted and ultimately ineffectual producer; a weak director; a timid bookwriter who watched his key scenes get cut because they couldn't be acted or directed properly; and a star, Boy George, who wrote a fine score (let's give him his due) but wasn't much of an actor.
One person involved in "Taboo" calls the show a "missed opportunity. There are a lot of really good things in it, there just wasn't anyone around who could pull it all together."
Set in the London nightclub scene of the early 1980s, "Taboo" is an autobiographical musical about Boy George and his relationship with fashion designer Leigh Bowery, who died of AIDS.
The musical was a minor success in London, where it ran for over a year in a small nightclub.
In retrospect, it might have been better off in a similar setting in New York.
But O'Donnell isn't one who thinks small, and so she blew "Taboo" up into a $10 million Broadway musical with new sets, costumes and a book by playwright Charles Busch.
O'Donnell hired Chris Renshaw, who directed the show in London, to stage it here.
But Renshaw came with baggage: His revival of "The King and I" in 1996 was brilliant, but a year later he was fired from "High Society" because of erratic behavior, and had pretty much been blackballed on Broadway.
O'Donnell knew Renshaw's history and, according to sources, had a "candid" conversation with him during which he assured her he was up to the job of directing "Taboo."
Busch, meanwhile, turned in a new script, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, that dramatized the relationship between Boy George and Leigh Bowery, and contained a key scene in which Boy George appears at Leigh Bowery's deathbed.
O'Donnell gave Renshaw a wide berth for the first few weeks of rehearsals while she concentrated on what turned out to be an ill-conceived marketing campaign for "Taboo."
And that's when things started to go off track.
Boy George, as Leigh Bowery, simply could not act emotional scenes with Euan Morton, who plays the young Boy George.
Renshaw was no help.
"Chris would say, 'Do you mind if we try this?' and if George didn't want to, then Chris would say, 'OK' and drop it," a source says. "The show was crying out for a director. It never had any guidance."
A member of the production staff says O'Donnell gave Renshaw "all the rope in the world to either swing like a star or hang himself. Unfortunately, he chose the latter."
Scenes Boy George could not act very well were either cut or replaced by songs.
"They were chipping away at Charles' book every day," says a production source.
Why didn't Busch fight for his work?
"Look, Charles isn't Arthur Laurents," this person says, referring to the famously tough bookwriter of "West Side Story" and "Gypsy."
"He doesn't like confrontation. And if they'd kept the scenes they would have been badly acted and badly directed."
(Ironically, critics would later complain that there was no connective tissue between Boy George and Leigh Bowery.)
When O'Donnell started coming to rehearsals, she knew immediately that the show was in trouble, sources said.
That's when the screaming matches began, culminating in the much-publicized blowup between O'Donnell and Raul Esparza, one of the show's stars, who felt the show was rudderless.
O'Donnell brought in a new choreographer, but when she tried to replace Renshaw with a new director, Boy George thwarted her.
"I felt it would be too disruptive," he later said.
By this time, O'Donnell was swamped by her courtroom battle with the publisher of her defunct magazine, Rosie, and, according to sources, seemed to give up on "Taboo."
Plans to postpone the opening were scrapped since, without a new director, there was no point in trying to salvage the show, and "Taboo" drifted to its sad opening night and a pummeling the next day by the critics.
"Taboo" has lost money every week, the houses are only about half full and one source says the atmosphere backstage is "depressing."
Renshaw pops in from time to time and encourages the actors to ad-lib.
And so Esparza now banters with the folks in the balcony, while Boy George makes jokes about Michael Jackson.
On Tuesday, when O'Donnell announced she was putting up the closing notice, Boy George, in a pouty mood, didn't show up for work.
He did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Busch, Renshaw or O'Donnell.
No villains here - just the weak, the timid, the lost.