Whatever I expected from the musical Bonnie and Clyde, this was not it. I expected romanticized bank robbers—people numbing themselves from reality through cars, guns, and constant motion, like the Warren Beatty film or Thelma & Louise. Instead, this show dedicates much of its time to the real-life background before they become the Barrow Gang.

In the lobby, people behind me were saying they had come without knowing what the show was about. I told them it was about robbery and shooting. Well, it wasn’t. Correction: it was—but only in a very small portion. The rest focused on circumstances, family, and repetitions of those themes. I was bored.

Act I opened with Bonnie’s home life with her mother and her job as a waitress. Clyde and his brother Buck escaped from prison, followed by Buck’s surrender—at the urging of his wife Blanche—back to jail. Bonnie and Clyde met when Bonnie’s car broke down and Clyde fixed it. Clyde suggested running away to Atlanta, but Bonnie hesitated. When she finally decided to follow him, she took a bite of a green apple and tossed it to Clyde; he took a bite as well. The gesture clearly marked their bond—temptation accepted, a choice made. The image felt symbolic even then. They committed petty robberies for food or small amounts of money. Clyde was arrested again, beaten and sexually assaulted in prison, escaped once more using a gun Bonnie had smuggled in, and killed a guard during the incident. That was Act I.

I had seen clips of the Beatty film on television—highlights of old movies—and expected Ford cars, robberies, and momentum. Instead, characters held guns and walked around the stage. That was largely it. Nothing spectacular.

Several scenes felt far too long: Buck’s escape into the beauty salon run by Blanche, Bonnie’s home scenes, and her workplace scenes. I did appreciate the puppet-like limb movements in the opening choreography and the band’s Southern rock and blues flavor. I also liked the staging. Layered screens on each side of the stage, slanted backward, were used to suggest movement, with locations like Bonnie’s house, Blanche’s house, and Eastham Prison indicated through projections in old newspaper–style fonts. The lighting was effective as well.

Yet despite individual elements working on their own, there was little glue holding the storytelling and the songs together. Bonnie later sang about the green apple again, reinforcing its symbolism—temptation, youth, something taken before it was ready. Like an unripe apple, their choice felt sharp rather than sweet. The idea was clear enough; the dramatic propulsion was not.

A duet between Bonnie and Blanche stood out as particularly puzzling. Duets between Clyde and Buck make sense—they share the same focus. The women’s duet did not establish either a shared or contrasting theme. It was reminiscent of the Lucy–Emma duet in Jekyll & Hyde, but there, both women sing about the same man. Here, the connection felt forced.

During intermission, I read about the real Bonnie and Clyde rather than the film synopsis and realized the musical is based on history, not cinema. The emphasis on family, melodrama, and slow pacing made more sense in that context. This was not a robbery-driven show, but a reflection on how the names “Bonnie and Clyde” or “the Barrow Gang” came to exist. Even so, I hoped Act II would finally allow something darker to happen.

It didn’t—at least not in action. Act II showed more aftermath than event: loot, indulgence, regret. When Clyde killed a guard for the first time, Bonnie froze and then launched into a belt afterward. It felt overly melodramatic. Bonnie repeatedly sang that she should not have followed him or should have left earlier.

The only fully staged robbery occurred at a bankrupt bank, seemingly included to show a customer asking Bonnie for her signature and the gang scattering money rather than stealing it. That banker was then shot dead. Buck and Blanche joined the gang according to historical fact, and Bonnie’s dislike of Blanche was emphasized—again, more than once.

Later robberies and killings were suggested by pointing guns toward the audience rather than staging action. By then, I felt both unsettled and restless. Most crimes were indicated by walking patterns, minimal ensemble use, and props rather than kinetic drama. Bonnie’s back-to-back numbers—“Dyin’ Ain’t So Bad” and the radio-sung reprise of “God’s Arms Are Always Open”—were placed too close together, leaving little space to reset her emotional state.

I did appreciate the slow bullet projection when Bonnie fired for the first time, though later projections became visually muddled. Even the stage mechanics reflected the show’s restraint: visible floor tracks and manually shifted set pieces, including the Ford V8 pushed on in darkness at the end, created a sense of weight and slowness in a story that should have been driven by speed and momentum.

The final sequence attempted a conceptual distinction: Clyde used gunshots for enemies and camera shutter sounds for loved ones, but both actions resulted in the figures collapsing onstage, blurring the intended difference. The idea was sound, but the execution was not clear enough. Visually, everyone collapsed in the same way. Bonnie showed sadness, but gently, without enough differentiation. Clyde performed the gestures, but rarely seemed to absorb the weight of each loss. Without visible processing—hesitation, recoil, accumulation—the distinction flattened. The moment became procedural rather than tragic.

The last image, with Bonnie and Clyde sitting in the car as red spots gradually filled the screen, was visually striking. When I left the theater, I felt the plot had failed to show their “achievements”—the robberies themselves. Their numbness first, and desperation later, might have landed more powerfully if we had been allowed to feel the momentum that led there.

One contextual layer the musical gestures toward is the reality of the Great Depression. This was a period when despair was widespread and trust in institutions was fragile; even governments benefited from having public attention diverted toward outlaw figures rather than directed upward in anger. That context helps explain why Bonnie and Clyde became symbols—but it does not explain their actions away. Robbery and killing did not cause their deeds so much as reveal them. Clyde would almost certainly have become a criminal in any historical setting. Bonnie, perhaps not—but she would still have been ruthless and self-centered all the same.

If the production wanted a casual, unthinking descent—closer to the films—it needed robberies, speed, and escalation. If it wanted reflection and symbolism, it needed sharper emotional articulation. In the end, it split the difference.

I enjoyed parts of Act I musically and appreciated the polish of the production, but the storytelling remained tame and circular. Once again, I was reminded that even with good songs, solid staging, strong orchestration, effective lighting, and handsome visuals, a musical can still leave me unsatisfied.

On my way home, my younger son texted me:

“How was the musical?”
“Painfully boring.”
“Why?”
“The robbers don’t rob.”
“So they just fall in love?”
“They philosophize.”