Nestled inside the tiny but mighty Shanley Pavillion Friday and Saturday, audiences heard the tunes of the Great Depression’s iconic thieves: Bonnie and Clyde. The show was told through their lens, primarily as adults, with moments of their younger selves woven through. These thieves struggled to make ends meet and dreamed of more but were caught up in violence. These moments manifested themselves through the show’s themes of gun violence, income inequality, and domestic abuse, among others. The show’s director, School of Comm Sophomore Alex Lopez, felt that these themes were important to tell, especially in an election year.
ALEX LOPEZ: Landing on Bonnie and Clyde for me was about exploring how the Great Depression of the 1930s with gun violence and the overbearingness of religion and justice in government would reflect into what 2024 looks like today.
Despite 2024 being an election year, this show has been a long time coming for Lopez. He even sketched out some of the show’s blocking and set design when he was just 13 years old.
LOPEZ: We’re looking at this idea of a broken American Dream. A lot of our sets and our costumes are somewhat dilapidated to reflect some of the ways in which America attempts to strengthen us and turns out to fail us.
As the show progresses, this theme is certainly prevalent throughout different characters and their struggles in the Great Depression. The musical is also based on a true story, with the website for Northwestern’s show containing historical breakdowns of many of the characters and settings.
The scenes reinforced these difficult notions, complete with prison breaks, siblings shot, and characters on the run. There wasn’t always agreement either, with Blanche, Clyde’s sister-in-law, attempting to provide a voice of reason to her criminal companions. This allowed the show to engage in conversation about these issues. The show’s producer, Weinberg Junior Connor Smith, echoed this sentiment.
CONNOR SMITH: Sometimes these difficult conversations are hard to have when you’re just talking one-on-one with someone. Sometimes it helps to hear these conversations through a song, you know, through a message, through a play. And that’s one thing that we really wanted to talk about in this show, is being able to show these themes on stage and letting people talk about it afterwards, talk about it beforehand, talk about it, even during intermission is really important to us.
With a show about two criminals as infamous as Bonnie and Clyde, there are bound to be weapons brought into the space. While there were concerns expressed about having these weapons in a school setting, the group worked with NUPD to create safety measures. Additionally, only prop guns were used.
SMITH: I feel like doing Bonnie and Clyde without these weapons is kind of doing a disservice to the show because it’s about gun violence and there’s conversations in the show about Bonnie and Clyde talking about the use of weapons and how that affects them mentally.
With carefully calculated efforts from the crew, these elements of the show were set. In doing so, the actors struck a delicate balance between the inherent violence and realism with heartfelt moments. Weinberg first-year Sonny Noble attended the show and picked up on this idea, praising those involved.
SONNY NOBLE: I know they have a script to follow and everything, so I think this speaks both to the integrity of the script and also the performance ability of our talent here tonight.
One member of the talent Sonny described is Timmy Woodward, a first-year theater major who played Young Clyde in addition to being in the ensemble. Though a longtime fan of Bonnie and Clyde, upon reading the script more in-depth, he felt drawn to the contrast. On one hand, the show covers serious topics, but on the other, it’s a musical with a plethora of upbeat music.
TIMMY WOODWARD: Finding those moments in the show to balance the super fun, high-octane energy with the real, real moments has been really, really fascinating to me and I’ve loved every second of it.
Much of the energy Woodward described came through the show’s music, which included a wide array of genres. While consisting of mostly show tunes, the Old West setting of the show meant that there were country numbers and even gospel songs to boot. This meant performers singing in different styles and a band including everything from a fiddle to a soprano saxophone. The person tasked with the feat of pulling off this musical ordeal? School of Comm Sophomore and Music Director, Clara Shapiro.
CLARA SHAPIRO: Honestly, it was so terrifying at first. This was my first solo music directing slot because I had a co on my position last year. So it was really scary, but also I was just really inspired to work really hard and match the energy and talent of all the other people in the room.
One of the primary factors that brought home an inspiring and energy-rich show was the audience and their enthusiasm. Despite a late-night performance, Shanley Pavillion was packed and the audience could be heard every step of the way. As a first-year theater major, attendee Tyler Guinto-Brody felt that energy throughout the show.
TYLER GUINTO-BRODY: It’s really inspiring to see so much energy come from, one: the actors on stage and also from the audience because it was for such a long period of time, from the night and going into the morning, but the energy never dropped below an 100.
SMITH: Go to a 9:30 show where people are going crazy, people are laughing, they’re cheering, they’re yelling at friends and family and it’s such a fun environment to have these conversations.
Affecting the nature of the cheering, however, are the characters that an audience is drawn to. With a show that had so many characters who were disturbed yet humanized in a personal way, it was hard to decide who to root for. When asked who in the show was the hero or villain, there wasn’t necessarily a clear answer.
GUINTO-BRODY: It’s a very gray world that we live in in Bonnie and Clyde, the show really exemplifies that. And I think that, through the characters, Bonnie and Clyde, and all the other characters in the show, you can see the bad that people can do, either intentionally or unintentionally while also being able to find the good in everyone despite varying circumstances that they come from.
When looking back at each of the characters, they are frequently portrayed both in poor and redeeming ways. Bonnie writes poetry for Clyde before their relationship abuse is shown. Young Bonnie dreams of being in the headlines and on the silver screen but achieves that goal as a gang leader, not an actress. Clyde and his brother Buck are introduced with their elaborate handshake before Clyde later has Buck’s blood on his hands. This leaves audiences with mixed opinions on the webs that these characters weave. Lopez’s advice? Choose love.
LOPEZ: I want the audience to feel this palpable sense of love and joy that these two had for each other and leave with a warmer heart and more empathy towards others because we have so much capacity for love in our lives.
For WNUR News, I’m Gabe Shumway.
