Tuesday, March 20, 2012
theater Aurora's "Clyde 'n Bonnie" sticks closely to musical theater's classic formulas
Posted by Andrew Alexander @AndrewAWriter on Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 11:37 AM
- Chris Bartelski
- Laura Floyd as Bonnie Parker and J.C. Long as Clyde Barrow in Aurora Theatre's "Clyde 'n Bonnie: A Folktale"
The new musical "Clyde 'n Bonnie: A Folktale," now on stage at Lawrenceville's Aurora Theatre through April 8, sticks pretty closely to that classic recipe. In fact, it treats the old recipe as if it's a scientific formula, adding each element in calibrated measurements and carefully placing everything in just the right place.
The result is an old-fashioned, energetic, crowd-pleasing musical in the mold of "Guys and Dolls," "The King and I" or "The Music Man." Those who love the old stuff will leave happy, but the show is unlikely to win any new converts to musical theater, and some may even feel that the formula has been followed too rigidly.
The story of Bonnie and Clyde is already replete with everything a musical needs: romance, action, an evocative time and setting, glamorous anti-heros, and, well, let's call it a big finish. If it hadn't really happened, Rodgers and Hammerstein probably would have invented it.
"Clyde 'n Bonnie: A Folktale" is a world premiere for Aurora that comes with a snazzy pedigree: Members of the creative team—Director Lonny Price, Composer and Lyricist Rick Crom, Writer Hunter Foster and Choreographer Josh Rhodes—have impressive Broadway credentials. The theater should take some justifiable pride in snatching up the little gem at the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which showcases new musicals with an eye towards Broadway, and giving the work its first full production.
- Chris Bartelski
- J.C. Long as Clyde Barrow with Caitlin Smith, Jennifer Smiles and Rachel Miller
Karen Howell as tough, no-nonsense, take-charge Texas grande dame Martha, makes a great narrator, but otherwise the framing device doesn't seem very profitable, or even necessary. Lead actors Laura Floyd and J.C. Long bring a lot of style and energy to the parts of Bonnie and Clyde, connecting to the glamour and edginess that made the legend famous, but also setting the pair apart from familiar representations. Bonnie's desire for something more exciting than small-town life is understandable from Floyd's first entrance and opening note, and we just as immediately understand that Long's sly, stylish, bad boy is the one who will provide it. Bart Hansard is great with some deadpan double-entendres as the cross-dressing villain J. Edgar Hoover, but the humor has a different context on a Georgia stage than the originally-intended New York one, though both audiences will undoubtedly laugh.
Every musical needs at least one song that lifts the roof off the theater, and "Clyde n' Bonnie" takes several shots, but the honor ends up landing in the lap of a supporting player. Caitlin Smith as Blanche Barrow, Clyde's new sister-in-law, a preacher's daughter who starts off on an evangelical mission to change her husband's life of crime but ends up joining him in it, builds "Turn Away" into a huge gospel-tinged, tent-revival number. It's the show's most memorable song (The signature tune "Land of Opportunity" is harder to hum).
In the end, though "Clyde n' Bonnie" checks off all the right boxes, it follows a familiar recipe too closely. Come to think of it, your great-grandmother probably never used a recipe for apple pie. No measuring cup can ever tell you if you've put in the right amount of this or that, she'd tell you: Sometimes you just have to go by feeling.
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