Bonnie and Clyde, King's Head - theatre review

Samantha Louise Clark makes a spirited Bonnie, while Tom Sword’s Clyde has a certain slickness and poise. But the singing is patchy, and despite some tuneful moments the general impression is musical blandness
Spirited and slick: Samantha Louise Clark and Tom Sword as Bonnie and Clyde
Alastair Muir
4 September 2013

This version of the well-known exploits of Great Depression outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, here receiving its world premiere, is billed as a "musical love story". But although there are 17 musical numbers, few are sustained. The songs don't really propel the plot, the gaps between them are too long, and only a couple of them have the zest that the subject matter so clearly demands.

With a book by Linnie Reedman, who also directs, and music and lyrics by Joe Evans, the piece comes from the same team that last year staged an adaptation of The Great Gatsby that was intimate and stylish even if musically underwhelming. Yet here there is a less assured sense of period.

Apart from some nice vintage film footage, which could have been used more effectively, we barely register the Thirties setting.

The Sixties movie Bonnie and Clyde, which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, was marketed with the line “They’re young, they’re in love, and they kill people”. That’s the essence of this show, too, though we are spared most of the gore.

Samantha Louise Clark makes a spirited Bonnie. Tom Sword’s Clyde has a certain slickness and poise, without projecting the necessary menace. The unequal attraction between the two (famously, in real life Bonnie’s passion contrasted with Clyde’s more ambiguous enthusiasms) doesn’t come across strongly. There’s decent work around them, notably from Gary Tushaw as Dallas deputy sheriff Ted Hinton and Emma-Jane Martin as Clyde’s melodramatic sister-in-law Blanche.

But the singing is patchy, and despite some tuneful moments the general impression is musical blandness. What’s more, the lyrics are largely unmemorable. Those that do stick in the mind include “Bonnie and Clyde don’t know that killing kills: The newspapers know that killing sells.” This flat-footed banality is typical of a show that needs to be much racier.

Until September 21 (020 7478 0160, kingsheadtheatre.com)

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