BWW Interviews: A Chat with the Texas Premiere Cast of BONNIE AND CLYDE

The Texas premiere of Frank Wildhorn's Bonnie and Clyde opens tonight at McCallum Fine Arts Academy in Austin.

When Bonnie and Clyde meet, their mutual cravings for excitement and fame immediately set them on a mission to chase their dreams. Their bold and reckless behavior turns the young lovers' thrilling adventure into a downward spiral, putting themselves and their loved ones in trouble with the law. Forced to stay on the run from every southern state's police force, the lovers resort to robbery and murder to survive. As the infamous duo's fame grows bigger, their inevitable end draws nearer.

BroadwayWorld recently visited a rehearsal of Bonnie and Clyde and had a chance to interview the production's director, Joshua Denning, plus several members of the cast, including Hanna McEvilly (Bonnie Parker), Jacob Roberts-Miller (Clyde Barrow), Sage Stoakley (Blanche Barrow), Connor Barr (Buck Barrow), Kendrick Knight (Ted Hinton), and Loretta Adams (Emma Parker).

BWW: Thank you all so much for doing this interview with BroadwayWorld. It's so cool to have all of you together. I've never had an opportunity to interview all of the lead and supporting players of a show before, so this is sort of unprecedented. Were any of you familiar with the show before you started rehearsals?

LORETTA ADAMS (Emma Parker): None of us.

HANNAH MCEVILLY (Bonnie Parker): I was really suspicious of what our show was going to be before it was announced. I knew it was going to be a Frank Wildhorn show, so I listened to his popular shows but as soon as I found out it was Bonnie and Clyde, I listened to the album on repeat.

BWW: I'm sure some or all of you have heard of the actually Bonnie and Clyde or have seen the film from the 1970s. Has your opinion of them changed since you started working on the show?

JACOB ROBERTS-MILLER (Clyde Barrow): I never really knew enough about Bonnie and Clyde in the first place to have much of an opinion about them. I knew they were notorious bank robbers during the Great Depression. I hadn't seen the movie, so after starting to work on the show and researching both the Great Depression and Bonnie and Clyde, I found out they're really interesting. Their story and the way it gets told in television and the news and history is fascinating. I think this show takes some artistic license, but it does a fairly good job at depicting them and the situation that drove them to their actions.

HANNAH MCEVILLY (Bonnie Parker): I think it definitely shines a new light on them as people. You look at them and you hear their stories and they're usually depicted as "Bonnie and Clyde, those ruthless bank robbers and murderers," but this show really lets people see inside of their lives. For example, Bonnie Parker wrote a lot of poems, a few of which are featured in the show. She talks about how they're not so ruthless and how they have feelings and are so in love. As long as they have each other by their sides, that's what keeps them going.

SAGE STOAKLEY (Blanche Barrow): I think before this show, I didn't know a lot about Bonnie and Clyde, and when I got my role, I made a point to do a lot of research because it's a real story. It's not a made up thing. It's a real thing that happened. So I learned a lot, especially from reading Blanche's memoir. By reading the published accounts of the people who went through this situation, you learn a lot about the kind of people that Bonnie and Clyde were. They were really young and they didn't know a lot about what they were doing. And they had this huge stardom and this huge desire to become famous. It got to the point where they didn't care what they did anymore. They just wanted to be seen, and I think this show captures that a lot.

BWW: You mentioned you did a lot of research. I'm assuming you all did. What did you look at or pull from to determine how you were going to play these characters?

KENDRICK KNIGHT (Ted Hinton): When I first found out I was playing Ted Hinton, I was like, "Who's Ted, and how does he fit into the Bonnie and Clyde story?" He actually turned out to be pretty interesting. He was a cop who kind of had a crush on Bonnie. In the musical, they kind of beef that up to the point where he's head over heels in love with her, just to make it a bit more interesting. There's a lot of cool stuff about this person who I didn't even know existed. Just reading his autobiography was very interesting.

LORETTA ADAMS (Emma Parker): Going off of what Kendrick said, when you first hear of Bonnie and Clyde, you really only know about the two of them. I play Bonnie's mom, and so it was interesting finding out about the other people who were very important to their lives and what their lives were like behind all of the infamous things they were doing. It was really interesting to respect the other people in Bonnie and Clyde's lives.

BWW: I'm sure for the two of you, Hannah and Jacob, playing people like Bonnie and Clyde must be challenging because they're so different from you. I mean, I'm assuming neither of you are criminals. So how do you go about playing someone who's so different and what challenges did you have?

HANNAH MCEVILLY (Bonnie Parker): In my research and looking at the script, I found some of myself in Bonnie and some of Bonnie in myself. She really didn't start off thinking, "I want to grow up and kill people." She just wanted to be famous like any other girl. In this time, they grew up so poor and had almost nothing. She looked up to these movie stars and idolized them and wanted to be them so badly. And then she found Clyde and he was kind of an escape. Looking at Bonnie in that way really put her into perspective for me as Hannah. She's a small town girl with big city dreams, and I think all of us can relate to that.

JACOB ROBERTS-MILLER (Clyde Barrow): Like Hannah, I found a lot of myself in Clyde in his drive to be successful and his desire to make something of himself in the world, although I don't want to do it in the way that he did. What really became the challenge was taking this basically decent human being and figuring out how to make the snap psychologically that really drove him to become who he became. I had to do various strange imaginings of what could possibly break me in the way that he was broken such that killing another human being in something other than self-defense would be acceptable.

HANNAH MCEVILLY (Bonnie Parker): At the beginning of the process, we'd sit down as a cast and really talk about our characters and the show. I think that helped a lot in the development of our characters. At the beginning, my idea of who Bonnie was was so different from who she really is for me now. I don't know if a lot of high schools do that, but I'm really grateful that we did it. We all hear the stories of Bonnie and Clyde, and even reading the script you kind of get it, but I think us sitting around a table and talking really opened a new door for all of us.

KENDRICK KNIGHT (Ted Hinton): One thing that most people think when they think of acting is, "Oh, it's about being fake." But when it comes down to it, you get into these deep characters, and you kind of trick yourself into thinking, "If I were in their position, what would I feel like?" My character's love stricken over Bonnie, so what would make me so in love with her that I'd want to go after Clyde?

SAGE STOAKLEY (Blanche Barrow): I think for me, my character's very outlandish. There's a scene in the show where there's so much chaos going on and so much scary, real life things going on that any normal person in this situation would be freaking out. My character's the only character in that scene that has that normal person response. It creates this image that Bonnie and Clyde were so different. They weren't like anyone ever met. They were sometimes what the papers said. They were these criminals, these robbers who would rob and think nothing of it. It's just very strange to see Bonnie and Clyde and Buck and Blanche work together. Blanche freaks out but the rest don't. It doesn't match and it creates this creepy tone that adds to the whole show, especially the relationships between the four of them.

BWW: Let's talk about the show as a whole a little bit. Why do you think the show didn't work so well on Broadway?

SAGE STOAKLEY (Blance Barrow): I read a lot of the critiques and a lot of people said the music didn't mix well. The songs are so different and they all have different feels and undertones. Some have this western folk song sound, a few intense chorus numbers, and then there's this Spanish number. You have all these different styles in this show, and I think it wasn't right for Broadway at this time. I think it's a show before its time. The music is so amazing. To get to sing that music is amazing, and if I personally saw this show on Broadway I would have loved it.

CONNOR BARR (Buck Barrow): I think deep down, this show is about real people who are brought up in the worst circumstances and put into these situations where they have to act out. I feel like a lot of what's happening on Broadway now are shows that involve character actors who are bigger than life. When there are characters who are real and sympathetic, some people aren't as interested.

LORETTA ADAMS (Emma Parker): Because this is a real story and a very popular story in Texas, Bonnie and Clyde mean more to Texas audiences than to New Yorkers. Some of them haven't heard of this story at all. Bonnie and Clyde never went north of Oklahoma. They're a very Southern phenomenon. I think it didn't blow up the New York scene because it's not part of their history. I think people here will really enjoy the show because it's part of our history.

KENDRICK KNIGHT (Ted Hinton): One thing that some people may not like is that there is no happy ending in this story. Essentially, it ends on a kind of happy note, but in the very beginning of the play, you see Bonnie and Clyde dead in the car, and at the end they're driving off, but they're driving off to their death. That makes people uncomfortable. When people see big Broadway musicals, they want to see things like Cinderella everything has a happy ending. When it comes to the music, some people don't like it because it doesn't flow enough, but I think the story itself is very jagged and rough emotionally. There are so many people and subplots and so many emotions, so you have these rock music moments and then these very soft moments. I think it all comes together, and if the emotions work on stage, it'll match the music.

CONNOR BARR (Buck Barrow): To build off of what Kendrick said, I think it's incredibly interesting that this is the kind of story where you know exactly how it will end. There's no big surprise or big finale. I think the little surprises and little moments along the journey are what makes this show. It's about the journey and not what happens at the end.

JACOB ROBERTS-MILLER (Clyde Barrow): This show is about real people. As much as it is a musical theater show, I think the difference in every show is part of what makes it so real. I think the difference in the songs match the difference in emotions and situations.

BWW: Is there anything else you want to say about the show?

LORETTA ADAMS (Blanche Barrow): It's been really fun. The process of this show has been one of my favorites. We've spent a lot of time on the characters and the emotions and motivations behind them. I think that makes a lot of the characters stronger.

HANNAH MCEVILLY (Bonnie Parker): I want to thank everyone who's a part of this show. I'm a sophomore here, and this is one of the first leading roles that I've had. Everyone's helped so much in this process, and I'm so grateful to everyone who believed in us, and it's such a big deal to be part of the Texas premiere of this brilliant show.

JOSHUA DENNING (Director): I want to say that it feels special. This show feels special. There's a special energy around it for some reason. I think it's the show itself and the story. It's a very simple show. There's not a lot of razzmatazz about it, and I think that's part of why it wasn't successful on Broadway. It's a story told straightforwardly with nice music. I don't think a lot of people in New York could handle that, but we're just trying to honor that and take it for what it is.

BWW: Well thank you all so much. This has been a lot of fun and I can't wait to see the show!

BONNIE & CLYDE: A NEW MUSICAL runs September 19th thru 22nd at the McCallum Arts Center Mainstage, located at 5600 Sunshine Dr. Austin TX 78756. Performances are Thursday - Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $6 for students. For tickets and information, please visit www.mactheatre.com.

1st Photo: Poaster for McCallum Fine Arts Academy's production of BONNIE AND CLYDE; 2nd Photo: The real Bonnie and Clyde; 3rd Photo: Hannah McEvilly poses in character as Bonnie backstage at BONNIE AND CLYDE; 4th Photo: Cover art from the Original Broadway Cast Album of BONNIE AND CLYDE; 5th Photo: The crew works on the set of BONNIE AND CLYDE.

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