‘Bonnie & Clyde:’ A rough story but an enjoyable musical
The ill-fated, bank-robbing duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow has been romanticized through the years, most notably in an Oscar-winning 1967 movie.
Forum Theatre Company is debuting a musical version of “Bonnie & Clyde,” which its director and title characters say adds to the romanticism while still keeping a foot in the harsh reality of their lives.
“It’s kind of a 1930s Robin Hood take on it,” Forum artistic director Kathryn Page-Hauptman said. “The truth is, they were not very nice people. They were pretty violent and pretty nasty.”
Hauptman said she was enthralled by the score by Frank Wildhorn, best known for the musical “Jekyll & Hyde.”
“It just gets caught in your head and it doesn’t go away,” she said. “It’s just very powerful, very emotional songs. The emotional track melodies take you on this journey, and the lyrics support it.”
“Bonnie & Clyde” played for just a month on Broadway in 2011 but was nominated for two Tony Awards, three Outer Critics Circle Awards and five Drama Desk Awards.
Stephen Hitchcock, who plays Barrow, said the true story might not make for an enjoyable evening of theater, hence the romantic side.
“I think that’s what people want to see in a story,” he said. “I don’t think people want to see something too violent or aggressive.”
“In a very subtle way, it explores the reasons why they ended up this way, the root of it,” Hauptman said.
Much of the reason, she said, was resorting to crime out of necessity.
“A lot of things are in correlation with what’s going on in contemporary society with poverty,” Hauptman said, “where there’s no choice but to turn to crime and guns.”
Hauptman offered the role of Barrow to Wichita theater veteran Hitchcock but looked a bit for someone to take on the female lead. She found it in Ari Chandler, a senior musical theater major at Wichita State who played Audrey in WSU’s “Little Shop of Horrors” a year ago.
“I watched documentaries to see how close they were to the script,” Chandler, lead singer of the Wichita band Annie Up, said. “I really wanted to get Bonnie’s back story and figure out why she did. She wanted excitement, she wanted adventure. She didn’t like small-town life. I can relate to that in a way.”
Hitchcock said the legend of Bonnie and Clyde has grown far more than their actual history.
“It’s interesting to try and separate the fact and the myth, because most of what’s know about them is kind of shrouded in this thick legend,” he said. “Now they come back and say, ‘We don’t know if this is true anymore.’ It was fun to read things that have kind of been debunked about them but then read things that they’re finding to be true and different from what they thought it was.”
With a 16-person cast, it’s one of the largest shows the Forum has produced. A change with the show is adding two ramps exiting from the stage, which speeds up scene changes, Hauptman said.
“I wanted to keep something excitement about the Forum and where we are,” she said of the Wilke Center at First United Methodist Church. “I thought, ‘Do we want to use the space differently?’
“The whole thing is very cinematic in the way it’s put together flowing from scene to scene to scene,” Hauptman added.
Hitchcock said “Bonnie & Clyde” is one of the most challenging musicals he’s faced, because it avoids the presentational tropes of the classic stage music and goes for a more realistic nature.
“They’re real earthy,” he said.
‘BONNIE & CLYDE’
When: Performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays though Oct. 14
Where: Wilke Center, First United Methodist Church, 330 N. Broadway
Tickets: $23 Sundays and other Thursdays, $25 Fridays and Saturdays, at 316-618-0444
This story was originally published October 3, 2018 at 12:02 PM with the headline "‘Bonnie & Clyde:’ A rough story but an enjoyable musical."