Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical
Trip of a Lifetime Goes with a Bang
Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical
by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black, book by Ivan Menchell
Adama Entertainment and associates at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking until 27th April, then on tour until 26th October
Review by Mark Aspen
Rat-ta-tat-tat! The startling opening of Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical, as the proscenium is sprayed with machine-gun bullets, overwhelming with its noise and disorientating strobe flashes, is a self-inflicted spoiler. It goes straight to the climax, the violent deaths on 23rd May 1934 of a notorious, yet celebrated pair of murderous lovers. Nevertheless, this works superbly dramatically, notching up the intensity and the inevitability of the tragic tale. After all, most of audience will know the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow through the acclaimed, but controversial, 1967 film.
However Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical has a different approach to the story from that of Arthur Penn’s film version. Instead of the gore-fest focussing on brutal realism, albeit leavened with black humour, the musical looks at the sources and motives of the protagonists, probes deeper than the film. Yes, the brutal realism and black humour are there, skilfully effected and with sharp insight. It is a more moral story, and a sad one in which misjudgements and mistakes lead to a ratchetting culmination of events, resulting in their summary extra-judicial execution by the increasing desperate and over-reactive authorities. “A short and loving life, ain’t so bad”, sings Bonnie presciently. They are 23 and 25 years old when they are killed. But as she says “Dyin’ ain’t so bad”.
There is something operatic about director Nick Winston’s take in this musical, the heightened emotions, the tussle between good and evil, even within each character, and that word of many Italian operas, vendetta. Then there’s the futility of it all; the real Bonnie and Clyde’s robberies rarely bagged more than a few hundred dollars at the most. Then again money is not their motive.
Philip Witcomb’s sepia design hints strongly at the period, commenting on the Great Depression in the USA, which forms the background to the story. The punctured set is perforated with bullet holes and with heavy grids, portcullis-like prison bars, all constantly on the move as the scenes travel with the fugitives. It is further enhanced by the lighting and video designs of Zoe Spurr and Nina Dunn, which are exceptional. All gives a film noir or film gris effect, but is dynamic and agitated.
If money is not their motive, what drives them? What turns them from being gawky youngsters dreaming the American Dream to a pair of outlawed sociopaths? Earlier scenes show the pubescent Bonnie dreaming of being a famous movie star like Clara Bow, while Clyde’s dream is being criminally subversive, his hero being Billy the Kid. The real Bonnie Parker was married at fifteen, then soon estranged, while Clyde Barrow was a petty thief, for whom prison changed him “from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake”. They lived in slums near Dallas, Texas in the depression, amongst mass unemployment and crop failures. It was not fertile ground for legitimate ambitions.
Alex James-Hatton makes an edgy, determined, amoral Clyde, charting the character’s decline as he sinks into a mire of his own making, whilst showing Clyde’s charm in winning round the trying-to-be virtuous Bonnie. Katie Tonkinson is captivating as Bonnie, portraying her with a heady mix of romance, ambition, and guts. She is feisty enough to hit back twice as hard when Clyde strikes her, yet finds it hard to resist an urgent erotic attraction to him. The two become bound in their mutual sexual appetites, their craving for excitement, and their desire to fulfil unrealistic ambitions. Tonkinson and James-Hatton both sing with passion, notably in strong duos, such as Too Late to Turn Back Now, and in their acting the chemistry between them really fizzes. What comes across is that, in spite of the outlawed pair’s appalling misdeeds, they do have a genuine love for each other, manifest in their enjoyment of Bonnie’s folksy verses.
This love is mirrored in that of his brother, Buck and his wife Blanche, an affection also strengthen by strong sexual bonds. However, their ambition is in contrast towards an honest life, propelled by Blanche’s Christian upbringing, and they aspire more to a quiet life than excitement. But Buck is conflicted between loyalty to his brother and to his wife. The brothers had been sentenced to a two-year goal sentence for car theft, but they escape from the prison. Buck is persuaded to give himself up, by Blanche and the unflappable ladies in her hair-dressing salon (who continue knitting or filing nails as the armed search posse crashes in!). Also instrumental in Buck’s surrender is the local church, led by the Preacher, played by the affable AJ Lewis. Cue a wonderfully enthusiastic gospel number, choreographed by Winston, God’s Arms Are Always Open, which could be recommended for any church worship band, if they can manage the pace. Here, however, the church’s good intentions come tinged with irony.
Buck returns to custody, but Clyde eventually has to be re-captured at gun-point. Clyde’s punishment is not only a sadistic beating by the prison warden (a very scary Andrew Berlin) but by being locked in a cell with a powerful perverted inmate who sexually assaults him. The traumatised Clyde reacts with violence. His number Raise a Little Hell gives blood splattered powerful voice to his anger. When Bonnie smuggles in a gun, Clyde commits his first murder to escape imprisonment.
When they go on the run, misjudged attempts at armed robbery results in more, often lethal, assaults. When Clyde himself is shot, Buck is impelled to go to his rescue, together with Blanche. In spite of Blanche’s misgivings, the two get sucked into the life of fugitives.
Sam Ferriday is a powerful prowling presence as Buck, uncertain, torn in his loyalties, but quick to react to defend his indefensible sibling. His duet with James-Hatton, When I Drive, certainly packs some punch. (And a period American Ford V8 saloon is a ubiquitous feature of the whole musical.)
There is quite a bit of grit in this foursome oyster in that the two women have a mutual antipathy, clearly expressed in the duet between Bonnie and Blanche, You Love Who You Love.
Oonagh Cox gives a remarkable performance as Blanche. It is particularly remarkable as on press night she stepped into the role as its first understudy, literally at a few moments notice, when the actresses billed as Blanche fell ill. The house was held for twenty minutes while her wig and costumes were re-modelled. Unfazed, she played the jumpy, pragmatic Blanche to a tee. Plus, we were treated to the amazingly wide range of her singing voice, exemplified in her number Now That’s What You Call a Dream.
The symmetry of the foursome is further tilted by the side presence of Ted Hinton, the local West Dallas postman, whose concern and affection for Bonnie is unrequited. Daniel Reid-Walters in this role expresses the pathos and the protective nature of the character, who joins the police to attempt to defend her from harm, who tries to moderate the over-reach of the vengeful law enforcement officers, and who is drawn, with ultimate irony, into the fugitives’ final fateful stand. The prime mover in the heavy-handed policing is Sheriff Schmid who puts vengeance over justice, perhaps with some justification in view of the death of seven police officers and four civilians. James Mateo-Salt, white suited and booted, plays the role with confident stage presence.
The many secondary roles are played by a skilled ensemble, all with exemplary panache. One niggle is that some of the actors, including some principals, have a priority in maintaining the heavy Texan drawl at the expense of diction, sometimes to the extent of inaudibility. Once they get into song, however, they are in fine voice.
Unseen stars of this musical though are the seven-strong band of versatile musicians under their musical director Issie Osborne, who keep the insistent pace of the desperate road trip moving. The story makes a difficult subject for a musical, but the music serves to comment on the plot as well as help tell the story. Together with Tom Marshall’s sound design, there is much to listen to. It all paves the road for the fugitive’s frenetic travels and travails.
There is much in Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical. There is pathos, in the anguish of the mothers, the plaintive Emma Parker (Jasmine Beel) and the frantically anxious Cummie Barrow (Taryn Sudding), who impotently feel the gradual dissolution, in several senses, of their children; and pathos in the lovelorn Ted who can only watch his hopes slip relentlessly away. There are touching scenes, most heart-rendingly of Blanche, kneeling lost in a desolate wood, cradling the splattered head of the mortally wounded Buck as he slips away from life.
However, there is also humour, black humour of course, in customers in the bank being raided by Bonnie and Clyde, dropping their high-held hands to ask for autographs of the notorious couple, now lauded as folk heroes. (But think Kray brothers in London just over two decades later). What follows is an argument, still in the middle of the robbery, about should they be called “Clyde and Bonnie” or “Bonnie and Clyde”, like the billing on theatre posters of the time. Here is the psychology of the human mind!
This musical is a study of motivation. The classical picture is that humans are motivated by power, money and sex. You could add, and fame. It is also a study of the value of love to bind. Moreover, it is paradoxically a study of the value of freedom.
The musical ends abruptly. A bloodied Clyde carries a limping Bonnie into the Ford V8.
But we have already seen the end, on an unmade country road in Gibsland, Louisiana, in a storm of 627 iron-clad machine-gun bullets, there ends Bonnie and Clyde’s American dream.
From the start of Bonnie and Clyde, the Musical, you know what is going to happen, but you sit there, hope-against-hope, hoping it won’t.
Mark Aspen, April 2024
Photography by Richard Davenport and Kris Askey
Mark Aspen 