that girl allison

Remember when I wrote about the sad plight of Bonnie and Clyde closing on December 30th and I was going to try to see it this week? Well, my friend and I scored rush tickets (awesome seats: orchestra, J 5 & 7) for last night’s performance. He’d seen it once before and loves Wildhorn, so he found ways to enjoy it. One of my friend’s had told me “it’s not that bad,” but I tried to go in with an open mind (but I was really expecting to be bored - as I am at most Wildhorn shows).

Well, I’m perplexed, but happy, to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I knew extremely little about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as real people before seeing the show (admittedly, I barely knew they were real people) but I was completely enthralled once it turned out that this was a history lesson (I’m a sucker for things like that) as well as a musical.

The score is great, save for a couple of songs in the second act (especially Made in America - they were proud, but I had no idea why). For the most part, it’s Wildhorn with an edge. The songs that the priest sang were a little annoying at times, but I got through it. Oddly enough, Jeremy Jordan didn’t win me over until he sang “Raise A Little Hell” during Act 1 but after that, I was hooked. Laura Osnes was great as Bonnie too. This was, at the core, a love story of two people who were so passionate and in love that they’d do anything to be together - a plot I did not expect to be singing.

Louis Hobson, from Next To Normal, has a couple of great songs and he really gets to show off his voice. I didn’t care for him, or his character, much otherwise though. Kelsey Fowler and and Talon Ackerman as Young Bonnie and Young Clyde are both immensely talented and were a pleasure to watch onstage. Claybourne Elder, who I’d seen in One Arm earlier this season, was my favorite supporting character. He’s a great actor and has a fantastic voice. 

The set was in the middle of being neat and simple. Furniture moves on and off automatically, and the center piece of the back of the set moves up and down, but otherwise, they make a lot of use out of one  consistent set.  

Between Bonnie and Clyde and Wonderland, this was definitely the better of Wildhorn’s two attempts at Broadway this year. It boggles my mind that certain shows doing an average ticket price of $25 haven’t posted closing yet, but this had it’s life cut so short. If you can catch B&C before it closes on December 30th, you should.

And the first show of the 2011-2012 theatre season bites the dust (at least I’m pretty sure, someone correct me if I’m wrong). This is Frank Wildhorn’s second flop in a single year, and his fifth consecutive flop on Broadway.

Bonnie and Clyde spent years in development, or at least it seemed like we were hearing about it for years. I’d heard pretty good things about it out of town. Then it came to New York and word of mouth slowly started to take a turn for the worse. I declined an opportunity to help a friend raise money for the show, which he ended up declining altogether too (which he’s now happy he did), and I’m glad I did - duh. I absolutely wasn’t at all excited about it and how can you raise money for a show when you have no enthusiasm about it? You can’t. Unless you’re just very smooth - which I am not, yet.

In addition to Bonnie and Clyde, Frank Wildhorn has had Wonderland, The Civil War, Jekyll and Hyde, and The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway in the last decade or so, and I’ve seen them all (save for The Civil War). 

The verdict? Wildhorn can write one hell of a score. I mean, really gorgeous. How many times have you heard This Is The Moment (from Jekyll and Hyde) in the past? Yeah. That song is basically a classic. I did however doze of for a moment during Jekyll and Hyde because the book was awful and boring (I was also 9 or 10 at the time). I remember the same thing about The Scarlet Pimpernel. Great score! - but boring show.

Lest we forget Wonderland - this was a concept that had such potential and a couple of great songs. I think it could’ve been the next Wicked. If it had been good (or decent, because a lot of people don’t really like Wicked and consider it poorly written as well). The show, I heard, had a bunch of inexperienced producers behind it though (from Florida, where it had it’s out of town try out) who didn’t realize the massive amount of work that needed to be done on it. 

I wonder what Wildhorn’s next show will be. Maybe he’ll hire a new collaborator to stop another bomb from being produced. But now it’s the rush of all theatre flop-junkies (yours truly included) to see this seasons first huge flop before it closes and goes down as another to-be-written chapter in an updated version of Not Since Carrie.

I’ll be there, hopefully, on Tuesday night. Or maybe not hopefully? Nah, I think hopefully is the right word.