8/23/2024 BONNIE & CLYDE Marietta Theatre Company
A SHORT AND LOVIN’ LIFE
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were folk heroes at a time when most of America was poor and at the mercy of the banks that owned all the farms, the banks that were the couple’s primary targets.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were thieves and fugitives, who cold-bloodedly murdered any policeman who got in their way. Twelve people died at their hands – the three who were not law enforcement were, I suppose, collateral damage.
The musical of their story (Book by Ivan Menchell, Music by Frank Wildhorn, Lyrics by Don Black) opened in San Diego in 2009 and landed on Broadway in 2011. It closed after only 36 performances despite playing to near sell-out audiences. Since 2011, it has been a popular choice for regional and community theatres; in fact, I designed lights and projections for a production at Cartersville’s Pumphouse Players just two short years ago, a production I am still proud of, and which, to my critic’s judgment, was one of the best musicals of that year.
And now, my old friends at Marietta Theatre Company have staged it and filled it with a breathtakingly talented cast of (to me and MTC) newcomers. Despite a few odd design choices I’ll mention later, this is a powerful, compelling, and memorable show that will linger long in your mind after the final curtain.
It is 1920, and we meet a ten-year old Bonnie Parker, dreaming of life away from Texas, preferably a life in the pictures where she could out “It” popular “It Girl” Clara Bow. Meanwhile, a twelve-year old Clyde Barrow dreams of becoming an outlaw, a modern-day Billy the Kid – “Ain’t nothing I can’t do with a gun!”
Young Bonnie and Clyde grow up and wind up in Depression-Era West Dallas, the poorest corner of a monumentally poor state. Clyde and his brother Buck are in jail for auto theft and Bonnie is a waitress at a cheap diner. They meet one night (Clyde and Buck have just escaped from jail) and almost instantly fall in love (well, perhaps it’s lust at first site, but it isn’t long before the connection is deeper). Meanwhile, Buck’s beautician wife Blanche encourages him to turn himself in, so they can start life fresh.
Meanwhile, a high school friend of Bonnie’s, Ted Hinton, has his own issues – his schoolboy crush never faded, and now he has become a Texas Sheriff’s Deputy. What could possibly go wrong?
This show wallows in Americana – gospel, blues, southern rockabilly all find echoes in the memorable score, with reminders of what’s at stake for America covering the story like a smothering blanket – raise-the-roof religiosity masks pie-in-the-sky promises, and official overweening judgment sucks the air out of any opportunity for “life afresh” or even for “getting by.” The rousing Act II opener, “Made in America,” drives this home, as the chorus of church-goers become sarcastically leering demons, bathed in red, white, and blue light (kudos to lighting designer Kim Merry for so many nicely visualized moments and “pictures”).
Eventually, the first officer is shot (“It was him or me”) and the pair are on the run, soon joined by Blanche and Buck, and the show races towards its inevitable conclusion along that Louisiana highway.
Arguments can be made that this show attempts to “whitewash” violent gangsters, and Bonnie and Clyde do make for (almost) sympathetic characters, the obsessed law officers comparatively villains who enjoy killing sprees as much as those on the “other side of the law.” Even dewy-hearted Ted Hinton joins the final posse, maybe more out of broken-hearted revenge than out of a sense of justice. Still, Bonnie is steadfast in her love for Clyde, loving and bickering with equal passion. Her poetic ambitions bleed over onto Clyde, as he “writes” his own love song to her. Their descent into chaos starts with Clyde’s imprisonment in a maximum security penitentiary where he is constantly abused by another prisoner, a prisoner who eventually dies at his hand. After the first “him or me” killing, the shootings become easier, almost a necessary “part of the job.” The show also avoids showing Bonnie killing anyone, though their is (debatable) evidence that she wasn’t afraid to “aim with intent.”
OTOH, it is clear that Bonnie and Clyde dreamed of this life, even as children, and, eventually, get exactly what they long wanted – fame and a “short and lovin’ life.” They no doubt had it coming.
Let me be clear right here, this is a dream cast, all of whom show power and range and depth, bringing to life these characters, charming us into rooting for them in spite of their questionable choices. Catherine Campbell (Bonnie) and Domenic Jungling (Clyde) are both newcomers to MTC, but both exhibit a talent almost too large for the Theatre in the Square stage. Their interactions burn with chemistry and their musical skills are Broadway-caliber.
They are equally matched by their younger selves – Emma Rose Smith (Young Bonnie) and Leland Gargiulo (Young Clyde). Neither youngster resembles in the slightest their older “selves,” but the talent displayed by all four solidifies the “Hamilton effect” – it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Other outstanding performances are turned in by Rachel Jarrad (Blanche), Josh Hudson (Buck), and Jacob Valleroy (Ted). A nine-face ensemble (*) assays dozens of roles and makes a memorable mark with each and every change of costume and attitude.
As to the talent “behind the scenes,” kudos to director Michael Stewart, Choreographer Zac Phelps, and Music Director / Production Manager Chance Harbin, who seemed to make (mostly) right choices and who keep the pace fast and smooth – I especially appreciated the lack of long scene changes, a unit set with a moveable chair and table and a “subtitle” display to establish each scene.
I was at first a little leery of the change made in the book’s structure – it is written to begin with the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde (accompanied by rabidly screaming headlines) and end with them enroute to their fates. Here, the opening was scrapped completely, starting immediately with young Bonnie’s dream of an opening song. But it pays off big time – now all those headlines are moved to the final moments, intercut with the final love song, and the effect is dynamite, a Browning barrage to the emotional heart, as it were, and it left me reeling, admiring the choice.
What was not so admirable was the casual attitude towards period, particularly hairstyle and facial hair – seeing Texas lawmen with shoulder length hair and modern beards kills any sense of the era. And with that loss goes the entire justification for the pair’s folk hero status. It (almost) turns the show into a musical in praise of the outlaw life (the choice to have non-period “outlaw songs” as the preshow and intermission background did not help), rather than a vivid portrait of the Depression and the lengths to which it drove its victims.
But, again, that’s the beauty of having such a strong cast – we may not accept them as real people of the Depression, but we DO accept their struggle, their choices, their reaction to a system that semi-sorta-kinda works in a contemporary setting. So, feel free to dismiss my carping about period to my Boomer and Academic obsession with accuracy. After all, if I can accept radically different young and adult Bonnies and Clydes without question, I should be able to accept non-period hair. You’d think.
There are only two more chances to catch this remarkable production, both of them today, and I strongly urge you to do so. It would be a crime to miss it, and you know how the judgmental mavens of law and order react to crime.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com #MariettaTheatreCompany #Bonnie&Clyde)
(*) Zander Krenger, Jordan Alexandre, Jackson Baughman, Delaney Circe, Leah Groover, Ashton Hardon, Marissa Garcia, Nicholas Rodrigues, and Jillian Schmidt