History meets legend meets young love, scored to the boogie-woogie beats of the 1930s with a little Gospel thrown in for good measure in the second run of Contact Theatre’s popular musical Bonnie & Clyde.
In this wild ride of a production, the spark that drew the outlaw duo together takes centre stage, and the fiction that fills in the gaps paints a story of Bonnie (Camille Cormier Morasse) and Clyde’s (Joel Bernstein) short, passionate, hope-filled time together. The scene is set from the get-go with a look back at the two as children, singing about their dreams (or, in Clyde’s case, his plans) of fame and fortune, and we know that they will get what they want, just not in the way they expect to.
Our sneak peak into the private lives of Bonnie and Clyde, the couple, is driven by heartbreaking harmonies, stolen moments in time, a look at how their actions affected their families, brotherly love, forgiveness, and acceptance—all counterbalanced by the long arm of the Depression-Era law.
Lighting and a live band drive us through music numbers from church (get ready for a rousing revival) to home, jail, the dark Texas woods, and the infamous getaway car that opens and closes the show.
If nothing else, the shootout scene that plunges us into rat-a-tat darkness only to reveal moments in time—set to the beat of Clyde’s heart—is worth the ticket price alone.
Bonnie & Clyde the musical runs from September 6 to 8 at 7:30 p.m. at the MainLine Theatre.
