BONNIE & CLYDE opened tonight at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. BONNIE & CLYDE has direction by Jeff Calhoun, music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black, book by Ivan Menchell and music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by John McDaniel.
Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan are joined on stage by Melissa van der Schyff as Blanche Barrow, Claybourne Elder as Buck Barrow, Joe Hart as Sheriff Schmid and Louis Hobson as Ted Hinton. The cast also features: Leslie Becker, Mimi Bessette, Alison Cimmet, Daniel Cooney, Jon Fletcher, Victor Hernandez, Sean Jenness, Katie Klaus, Michael Lanning, Garrett Long, Matt Lutz, Marissa McGowan, Cassie Okenka, Justin Matthew Sargent, Tad Wilson, Kelsey Fowler, Talon Ackerman, Rosie Baker and Jack Tartaglia.
Did they do a bang-up job with the critics? Let's find out...
Ben Brantley, The New York Times: “Bonnie & Clyde,” which opened on Thursday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, is a modest, mildly tuneful musical biography of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, the kissin’ outlaws from Texas who hijacked the American imagination during the Great Depression. It portrays its title characters (played by Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan) as restless, libido-charged young ’uns who are about to suffocate from the grayness of their dreary lives.
Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: The first act, where our anti-heroes meet and begin their illegal activities, is the best. Director Jeff Calhoun moves the action swiftly, combining a wood-slate set, projections and moody lighting to create period atmospherics. Things unravel in the overlong second act, which wastes too much time on uninteresting secondary plot lines and characters. Melissa van der Schyff is terrific as Clyde’s sister-in-law, but Blanche’s motivations make no sense.
Where is the excitement of gunnin’ and runnin’, you wonder?
Elysa Gardner, USA Today: But even as played by a pair of appealing, charismatic young actors, these two never emerge as the populist anti-heroes that the writers clearly had in mind. Laura Osnes' fresh beauty and understated sauciness can mitigate this Bonnie's moony, moody antics only so much, while Jeremy Jordan's robust singing and graceful swagger just make the hollowness of Clyde's narcissism — and of the generic vocal showcases that Black and Wildhorn provide him — more obvious.
