“Bang, bang, you’re dead!” So sings Clyde Barrow of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde, desperado paramours of American legend, in the Rubicon Theatre Company’s production of Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical. Directed by J. Scott Lapp, Bonnie and Clyde is a swingin’ outlaw adventure that focuses intimately on the fallacy of the “American Dream” — specifically how the brutality of poverty in the Dust Bowl turned two kids, dreamers determined to make their mark, into rash criminals grinning into certain death.
The cast features impressive vocal talents (even Harper Ham and Chance Challen as child versions of Bonnie and Clyde were notable) performing the gospel-infused, jazzy theater mixes by Don Black and Frank Wildhorn. Ellie Smith as Bonnie and Russell Muzyczka as Clyde bring a zesty, youthful recklessness to the tale. As Bonnie’s poetry, which she dreamily scrawled in a notebook, describes, these characters know this life isn’t one in which people grow old; and they well know the law always wins. Muzyczka’s Clyde, a punk made undaunted (but foolhardy) by a hard-knock life, and Smith’s Bonnie, a bit too fearless for a “proper” young lady, make a rollicking pair of charismatic rebels.
Set in an ambiguous wood-slat, warehouse-style location that serves as all interiors and exteriors, bold lighting and illustrative projection tapestries across the upstage walls provide that dusty, vintage look that reinforces the dereliction of the Great Depression. Through to the final tableau of Bonnie and Clyde, together in the car where they made their final stand, this production keeps the wild hope of American prosperity alive — even as Bonnie’s prescient poem rings in the audiences’ ears: “Someday they’ll go down together, they’ll bury them side by side. To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief, but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”
See Bonnie and Clyde: The Musical at the Rubicon Theatre through May 18. rubicontheatre.org
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