Francesca Noe and Nick Gehring's On-Stage Chemistry Brings The Sizzle to BONNIE & CLYDE

Thanks to the tumult of the increasingly dark and dismal days of the Great Depression, the public’s incessant desire for escape from the monotony of their lives and the rapidly evolving media’s hunger for more sensational stories to satisfy their followers’ cravings, it should come as no surprise that the exploits of a thieving, murderous Texas couple would capture the world’s imagination, leading them to become the quintessential antiheroes of a time in American history. Thus, our continued fascination with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow remains unfettered almost a century after their deaths.

A musical theater version of the infamous pair’s ill-fated life together is brought to life in a highly romanticized, tuneful and fast-paced production of the Frank Wildhorn-Don Black-Ivan Menchell Broadway musical Bonnie & Clyde, which played just a month on the Main Stem, but has since enjoyed a successful run in the United Kingdom and in American regional theater. Now onstage through Sunday, February 18, at Lebanon’s Capitol Theatre and directed by Angie Dee for Audience of One Productions, Bonnie and Clyde offers audiences a rip-roarin’ good time, featuring superb performances from the company’s stable of stars.

Led by the performances of Francesca Noe and Nick Gehring in the musical’s eponymous roles – and Lindsey Swearingen and Mateo Palmitier as Blanche and Buck Barrow – AOO’s Bonnie & Clyde is splendidly paced (the action moves right along at a fast clip, not unlike Clyde’s favored Ford automobiles that were his personal choice when finding a car to steal to provide the Barrow gang quick getaways) thanks to Dee’s deep understanding of what makes a show work for audiences who have grown accustomed to other forms of entertainment these days. And, with her sharp eye for visuals to engage the people out in the dark, Dee leads her team (including costumer Katie Dee and set designer Pierre Boulogne) in creating a physical production that provides the period-perfect settings for the events that span the late 1920s-early 1930s.

Wildhorn’s musical score for Bonnie & Clyde is noteworthy for its skillful blend of a myriad of musical styles – which range from country and western to 1920s jazz, from Broadway pop to gospel, and everything in between the various genres to effectively capture the tone and feeling of the era – that afford plenty of opportunities for Dee’s talented cast to show off their own showbiz bona fides. Black’s lyrics do a fine job of allowing the characters to best express their deepest, darkest feelings and desires and Menchell’s often-clever book includes a plethora of lines to be savored, including my personal favorite: “Mama, I’m too young for a brooch.” Taken out of context, it doesn’t elicit a guffaw, but hearing Bonnie deliver it to her mama certainly made me laugh out loud!

For fans of the 1967 Oscar-nominated film Bonnie and Clyde (starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty), the musical covers familiar territory, but longtime followers of the thieving, murderous Barrow gang’s exploits are sure to notice that much of their story is missing from the musical theater treatment. The fact is, however, that there’s so much to tell about their exploits that no entertaining diversion could cover every noteworthy aspect of their crime-filled reign. In that respect, Bonnie & Clyde is more of a “greatest hits” version of their lifestories, with much poetic license needed to create an easy-to-follow plotline that somehow manages to capture the violent and illegal aspects of their lives without causing too much trauma.

Arguably, one of the show’s shortcomings is its reluctance to cast the legend of Parker and Barrow in a darker light which, though more accurate, would make it more difficult to watch. (Mercifully, the musical doesn’t show the aftermath of one altercation that left Buck with his brain exposed and forced to travel several hundred miles – but I digress; I must confess that I’m fascinated by the true-life crime story that suffuses the legend of Bonnie and Clyde with difficult to fathom and hard to believe tales of what really transpired.) Instead, Wildhorn, Black and Menchell pay tribute to the legend – and its pop culture popularity, whatever the ramifications of that may be – with a far brighter tone that makes the material far more palatable, though no less intriguing.

More interestingly, the way in which Bonnie and Clyde meet their demise is handled with restraint – can you imagine how challenging it would be to show the couple dying in a hail of bullets onstage? – and instead we see them expressing their love to each other while headlines from the newspapers of the day tell the story of what happened on a dusty backroad in Louisiana in 1934. Bonnie was 23, Clyde 25.

Whatever may separate the facts from the legend in the story of Bonnie and Clyde, it is the palpable, if indefinable, onstage chemistry between Noe and Gehring (who recently starred opposite each other in Anastasia) that truly elevates this production of Bonnie & Clyde beyond what might be anticipated. Noe’s Bonnie Parker is a force of nature: an alluring, would-be flapper with a heart of gold, who yearns to find her place in the sun – she longs to become a Hollywood film star – and Noe performs her musical numbers with confidence, heightened by the character’s innate bravado. That she looks like a million bucks in Bonnie’s jazz-age costumes and slinky lingerie is just a lagniappe after the feast provided by her dazzling vocals.

Likewise, the handsome Gehring is relentlessly charming as Clyde Barrow, fit as a fiddle in those gangster era suits he wears, bringing him to life with great vigor that is underscored by his commanding stage presence. Gehring very effectively takes on the dual natures of Clyde’s persona – at once, he is the very definition of a good ol’ Texas boy and a conniving, immoral highwayman in search of ill-gotten gains – and is absolutely believable as either. Further, it appears that Gehring can sing anything his role will allow; he’s equally adept at an up-tempo country swing tune as he is at a calmly seductive love ballad.

Therefore, it should come as absolutely no surprise that when you leave the theater, you’re a little bit in love with both Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, no matter how unsavory their characters really are, their criminal records notwithstanding (the show won’t tell you, but I will: Clyde wasn’t the only ex-con – Bonie also did time!). It’s just that Francesca Noe and Nick Gehring are so good, so relatable and so attractive that you just can’t help yourself.

Palmitier and Swearingen are just as terrific as Clyde’s ne’er-do-well brother Buck and his wife Blanche. Both actors are clearly at home onstage and they approach their roles with a sense of adventure, relishing the idiosyncrasies of the hot-for-each-other couple to bring them to life with wit and style. Palmitier’s Buck is as loyal and supportive a brother as you’d ever hope to meet, and Swearingen plays the Bible-quotin’, Jesus-lovin’ and jodhpur-wearin’ Blanche with the perfect blend of backwoods judgment and all-out crazy that makes her inordinately annoying and a joy to behold.

As the younger versions of Bonnie and Clyde, Ariana Marlow and Alex Hillaker (the hardest-working almost-ten-year-old in local show business) prove their mettle and hold their own in roles that are more than mere placeholders until we meet the grown-ups.

Angie Dee herself, as Bonnie’s mama Emma Parker, leads the talented supporting cast who bring the show so evocatively to life. Andrew Hutton very nearly steals the show as a hellfire and brimstone preacher, whose evangelistic fervor ignites the action onstage, while Tate Burgess delivers a heartfelt and oftentimes moving performance as lovestruck sheriff’s deputy Ted Hinton, who’s taken a shine to Bonnie ever since he knew her in high school and who argues for restraint as lawmen plot to bring down the Barrow gang. As Sheriff Schmid, William Launsby is forceful, if somewhat inept (in just the way we’d expect a rural Texas sheriff to be when put up against a gang of legendary criminals), and Cory Bond cuts an authoritative figure as Texas Governor Ferguson.

Tara Leurs and Pierre Boulogne are quietly reserved as Clyde and Buck’s parents, while Lauren Schaefer Gardner, Audrey Venable and Abi Williams are terrific as a trio of beauty shop customers who help Buck hide out from the law.

Bonnie & Clyde, The Musical. Book by Ivan Menchell. Lyrics by Don Black. Music by Frank Wildhorn. Directed by Angie Dee. Musical direction by Mark David Williams. Fight choreography by Mateo Palmitier. Stage managed by Isaac Osipchuk and Trinity Todd. Presented by Audience of One Productions. At the Capitol Theatre, Lebanon. Through Sunday, February 18. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission. For details, go to www.AudienceOfOneProductions.com.

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