Bonnie & Clyde pull into Broadway in new musical (AP Photo/Jeffrey Richards Associates, Nathan Johnson)
Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tickets: $66.50 – $226.50
www.bonnieandclydebroadway.com
Products of poverty-stricken depression-era America, Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow both dreamed of a better life: Bonnie wanted to be a Hollywood movie star like Clara Bow, while Clyde wanted to be a famous gangster like Al Capone. Their love story is at the heart of the new Broadway musical Bonnie & Clyde, which enters with guns blazing but leaves firing a series of blanks. The show opens with a blood-spattered Bonnie and Clyde front and center, lying dead in their machine-gun-riddled car, real headlines of their demise projected on the wooden-slat backdrop. The story then goes back to their childhood, with young Bonnie (Kelsey Fowler) singing of making it in Tinseltown (“Picture Show”) and young Clyde (Talon Ackerman) predicting his daring future (“The World Will Remember Me”). Soon nineteen-year-old Bonnie (Laura Osnes) is slinging hash in a local diner, while twenty-year-old Clyde (Jeremy Jordan) has escaped from yet another prison stay and is on the run. They fall instantly and madly in love, Bonnie reading Clyde her poetry on a starry night. Joined by Clyde’s brother, Buck (Claybourne Elder), and his Bible-thumping wife, Blanche (Melissa van der Schyff), they hit the road, becoming folk heroes as they rob banks, sign autographs, and are chased by the cops, leaving a bloody path behind them. “Freedom is something I gotta steal,” Clyde declares.
Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan are the best things about misguided BONNIE & CLYDE (AP Photo/Jeffrey Richards Associates, Nathan Johnson)
Osnes (Grease, Anything Goes) and Jordan (Newsies, West Side Story) will inevitably be compared to Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty from Arthur Penn’s iconic 1967 film, which is unfair and does them a disservice, as they each deliver strong, sexy performances even as the material soars downhill faster than Clyde can drive. Book writer Ivan Menchell’s (The Cemetery Club) story is choppy and disjointed, with far too many throwaway scenes and filler (including Clyde and Buck singing about driving and a preacher and his congregation proclaiming that “God’s Arms Are Always Open”), Jeff Calhoun’s (Newsies) direction and choreography are uninspired, except for the appearance of cool classic cars, Don Black’s (Sunset Boulevard, numerous James Bond themes) lyrics are trite and stale, and Frank Wildhorn’s (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel) score flirts with Americana roots music, blues, country, and folk in the first act but doesn’t even try in the second, instead turning to overly standard and unsatisfying Broadway pabulum. The musical is supplemented with projections of actual photos, newspaper articles, mug shots, and other paraphernalia as it seeks to tell the true story of these two antiheroes, wisely choosing not to be a musical version of the movie, but it lacks the power and pace of the film, becoming a rambling tale that is determined to fill two and a half hours no matter what. They would have done better throwing away the boring, unnecessary subplots and filler and just followed Bonnie and Clyde themselves, leaving Osnes and Jordan center stage, where they belong.