Through October 27
BONNIE & CLYDE Allendale Theatre/Bellissima Productions
By Augustine Warner
A fascinating saga of love and murder, hard times and police murder, a century ago.
This is “Bonnie & Clyde,” the musical version.
Bellissima Productions is staging the show in the Allendale Theatre, with lots of musicians, some strong acting and some good voices.
I say some good voices because the sound system fuzzes too many voices in what might have been a fine show.
Too bad.
The show itself has a distinguished pedigree, music from Frank Wildhorn, lyrics from Don Black and the book from Ivan Menchell.
Wildhorn is known for his music in “Jekyll & Hyde,” “Civil War” and “Dracula.”
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were flaming stars in the media landscape of the pit of the Depression, along with other psychotic gangsters, like “Pretty Boy” Floyd and “Baby Face” Nelson.
They killed people, particularly cops, and stole from anyone who wandered across their paths.
Bonnie and Clyde may have received more attention than some others, perhaps because of the number of people they killed and perhaps because of the sexual images of the two, in puritan times.
Director Nicolette Navarro is working with a large cast and two Clydes and three Bonnies.
The show wants an age spread as we see the young Clyde and Bonnie turn into the monsters murdered on a Louisiana highway, violent deaths both expected.
In contrast to today’s gangsters who operate on social media, B&C had photos and newspaper and magazine coverage (and Bonnie’s poetry) to raise their profiles.
They started young, hoping to move out of the poverty in which they grew up, here, it’s Young Bonnie (Madelyn Kelley and Madelyn Goldberg) and Young Clyde (Corbin Byant), with “Picture Show,” dreaming of fame and money.
There’s also Clyde (Quinn Christopher McGillion) and Bonnie (Elise Vullo), with the adult versions performing “The World Will Remember Me.
Reality is shaped by mom Blanche Barrow (Timiyah Love), brother Buck Barrow (Aaron Gabriel Saldana) and the Salon Women, with “You’re Goin’ Back to Jail.”
Life wasn’t easy for those with a passion for the good life by bad means.
Behind the scenes, Preacher (Chris Cummings) offers the call of religion as an alternative to crime.
He’s very good, in songs like “God’s Arms Are Always Open.”
Those arms will have to reach ever further, as this crowd moves deeper into violent moral depravity, as Bonnie announces “Dyin’Ain’t So Bad” and she and Clyde decide “Too Late to Turn Back Now.”
It’s easy to see where this is all going, particularly when Governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathryn Giangreco) brings in Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Elliot Fox) to get B&C, no matter how.
Hamer and his execution team succeed, even if they cross the state line and offer no quarter to the pair.
The public approves and takes some awful souvenirs.
This is a different kind of musical because it’s really short on good guys since even law enforcement is on a vendetta, leaving Bonnie and Clyde to go out the way they expected to, in a downtrodden, abandoned life.
There’s a lot of good music here and some good voices, McGillion, Giangreco and, occasionally, Vullo make it through the sound system, to show what she can do.
All of this occurred at a time when movies and radio made crime an up-to-the-minute event, much faster than newspapers, magazines and books, with residents of the nation never sure their local murderers and gangsters won’t show up on their blocks or their streets to kill.
“Bonnie & Clyde” has lots of good moments and a good story of two people who want to go out in a blaze of glory, .45 caliber style.
Take a look.
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