BONNIE & CLYDE at The GARRICK THEATRE, LONDON
Tickets: Gifted
Date: 29th March 2023
Seat: V6 (Stalls)
Star Rating: 3
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are two people whose names have gone down in history. They're the infamous couple who robbed and murdered their way across the country, taking down anyone who stood in the way of their dreams of being rich and famous. As deadly and decidedly unpleasant as the pair were in real life, their story is one that has been romanticised and idolised in all kinds of interesting ways over the years, and this musical version is an interesting take on the Bonnie and Clyde mythology.
But that doesn't mean it's a worthwhile one.
In Bonnie & Clyde, which stars Frances Mayli McCann as Bonnie and Jordan Luke Gage as Clyde (although Barney Wilkinson was playing Clyde when I went to see the show), along with Jodie Steele, George Maguire, Cleve September, and Dom Hartley-Harris, we have something that should have blown me away. The story has all the makings of an epic spectacle, complete with gun fights and romance, but all of the life was sucked out of the show thanks to some dull staging and very little movement. And no final gun battle, which is what everything had been leading up to, and why I was left feeling supremely disappointed.
I never felt I actually got to know the two main characters. We hop from point to point in their story but never really get to see what makes them tick. We know that Bonnie wants to be a movie star like her idol, Clara Bow. We know that Clyde is a good driver who is rather vain, and he wants to be like Billy the Kid. But that's about it. It doesn't go deeper than that. And I just couldn't get behind the idea that in one scene, Bonnie is a good girl with big dreams for the future, and in the next, thanks to a chance meeting, she's a criminal. What happened in between? Where was the context, and where was the story that got her to where she ended up? That would have been interesting, but it was all missing.
However, my idea of a three-star show is one in which the good and the bad are equal, so although there were parts I really did not enjoy, there were parts I loved, and it's only fair to talk about them as well as the more negative points.
I very much enjoyed Frances Mayli McCann as Bonnie. She offered up a performance that was both sweet and knowing, and although I didn't like the change in her character (because it felt rushed and unbelievable), I felt it was handled very well by McCann. Her rendition of 'Dyin' Ain't So Bad' was beautiful, and it allowed the remnants of Bonnie's innocence to shine through. Perhaps if there had been more opportunity for this kind of thing, her character would have made more sense.
The standout performer for me, however, was Jodie Steele as Blanche. Ostensibly the comic relief ('You're Going Back To Jail' was a great comedic number), we understand more about her character than anyone else's. Steele's ability to go from comedy to tragedy and make me care deeply about Blanche and her husband, Buck (Clyde's unfortunate brother), was wonderful, and in the end, I was much more interested in this couple and their story than in the titular pair. Jodie Steele really did steal the show.
I also, perhaps inevitably, loved 'You Love Who You Love', sung by Bonnie and Blanche. It was a treat to see these two excellent performers work together.
For the most part, I thought the staging was uninteresting, which isn't an issue if the story is told well, but in this case, it just added to the blandness of the whole thing. However, projections on the back wall of the stage were used to good effect and were definitely needed to make things more interesting. It's a real shame they caused some technical difficulties that resulted in the show entirely stopping in the first act and then having an extended interval during which many audience members actually left.
The music is catchy, and some of the performances are first-class, but all in all, this is a three-star show with some five-star elements, and that's just not enough for me.
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