Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan Photo by Nathan Johnson
When a show has a hard working, talented cast that have built relationships with one another, when a show has leads who can sing, be they belters or balladeers, when a show has kid actors every bit as good as the grown ups, you want to cheer for them and their terrific designers – That set! Those costumes! That lighting! Them projections! – and their hard working director and their forty producers. You even like some of the composer’s songs, even if the words don’t fit. But lordy, try as you might and try as they might, you just cannot be persuaded by the book’s version of the rise and flame out of two po’ white trash kids who had nothing and had nothing to lose. Except their lives. As bad as the Depression pounded people into the ground, as bad as preachers, prejudice and false pride plowed the barren soil of these pathetic, desperate souls they still had their rights to respect, to dignity, to love, to happiness. And that’s all Bonnie and Clyde wanted. Well, plus money. Plus fame, too. Didn’t they love themselves in print. Plus a good time and the power to come out on top over even if it took some killing. Or especially if it took some killing, later on.
So – for starters, Bonnie and Clyde is hard to love. Everybody tries hard to reach you, to make you like them but you’re not liking Clyde Barrow, the moronic hick gangster, you’re liking Jeremy Jordan, young star on the rise, charisma up the wazoo and a freedom and power on stage to make you cheer. You’re taken by lovely Laura Osnes, whose beauty and grace and voice lend oceans of elegance to Bonnie Parker, a brainless, conscienceless egomaniacal twit. And – as good as Jeremy and Laura are with each other, no matter what director Jeff Calhoun asks them to do, they just do not trigger our yearning to care a hoot about Bonnie or about Clyde or vice versa. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. All this hard work, all this talent, all this focus for months and months on bringing the show to Broadway, this is big time emotional and psychological and financial trauma.
And for composer Frank Wildhorn, it’s more than ever the works. Talent? Endless. Ye gods, this is his seventh Broadway outing. One sort of hit, six misses, no raves. What is it, Mr. Wildhorn, what is it you do? Or don’t do? And not for a moment do I believe you are not going to come back again with show number eight. But have you learned anything you wanted to learn? And at what cost? Your shows have been in the aggregate all about you. We long to know – as well as hope –that the light will go on. You can write music in any style. That much we’ve seen and heard. Reach for big, operatic effects as well as spin out country ballads. Is it the search for a fit with your lyrics, your book, your actors, your show, your concepts? Your opening, haunting song turns into a jingle about Clara Bow. That jars. The Clara Bow jingle is a well tried story telling verse technique okay to stand on its own but it doesn’t fit the lyrical essence of your song. They don’t match, combine, become one. It happens over and over, darn it. Yes, stand alones work handsomely. The beauty parlor number is a real cute version of other successful numbers we’ve seen before and with Blanche (wonderful Melissa Van Der Schyff) and Buck (wonderful Claybourne Elder) and the Beauty Parlor Beauties it works like a charm. But that ain’t Bonnie and that ain’t Clyde and that ain’t the whole show.
Somehow, early on, the ball moved and nobody had kept an eye on it. Bonnie and Clyde? We loved Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty but let’s face it, we still hate Bonnie and Clyde. Much as I admired Tobin Ost’s scenery and costumes, much as I admired Michael Gilliam’s lighting, much as I admired Aaron Rhyne’s projections and Jeff Calhoun’s staging,, yes and Frank Wildhorn’s music and some of Don Black’s lyrics, and Kelsey Fowler and Daniel Cooney and Talon Ackerman and so many others, it’s – let’s call it a show for special tastes.
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, 236 West 45th Street. Tickets: $66-$136.50. Tue-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7:30 pm. Mat, Sun 2 pm. 212-239-6200.