BONNIE AND CLYDE by Adam Peck. Directed by Mark Jackson. Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. www.shotgunplayers.org. Through September 29, 2013
BONNIE AND CLYDE a fanciful take on the last night of an infamous duo
It is 89 years since infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were gunned down in a fusillade of 130 bullets on a rural road in a Louisiana Parish. It is not a historic milestone that deserves remembrance yet auteur Mark Jackson and the Shotgun Players have produced a realistic and mythical montage of the last night of their lives all compressed into a taut 80 minutes.
Knowing the work of Mark Jackson you are assured to see a theatrical event when he is at the helm. So it is with the play Bonnie and Clyde that was written by Adam Peck a respected English playwright and produced in 2010. By including obscure stage directions the author expected every future director to be original in their staging.
Jackson certainly has taken note of Peck’s desires and has created a mixture of dramatic action, thoughtful inner monologs, fanciful interludes with stunning visual projections and sound. The locale is a barn where the robbers/murders/lovers Bonnie and Clyde (Joe Estlack and Megan Trout) have taken refuge. The evening begins with Clyde reading excerpts from Bonnie’s poem “The Trail’s End” with prophetic lines “That Death is the wages of sin” and “Some day they’ll go down together . . . to few it’ll be grief . . . but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.” The ominous sound effects include barking dogs and gun shots with a recurring video of a spinning car wheel and a black bird/vulture(?) circling overhead.
It is the time of the Great Depression and the era of the Dust Bowl and our duo fancies themselves as the Robin Hoods of their time. The play strongly suggests that they are simply normal people fashioned by the time in which they lived. Many who followed their exploits in newspapers are envious and admiring. The published articles are ego building, especially to Bonnie who wants “show time for Bonnie Parker.”
Bonnie’s caring side becomes evident when Clyde may or may not have killed a pet mouse and she confronts Clyde with a shotgun insisting “That is the worst thing you have ever done!” Really?
Jackson dovetails their loving relationship with dance numbers (think of the play Chicago,) games of Hopscotch and a “let’s pretend wedding.” If the action and visuals were not so intense they would certainly qualify as tongue-in-cheek vignettes.
It is a taut, superbly acted two-hander with a top-notch production crew that predictable ends with a gut-wrenching visual of their ambush. As a white-wash of Bonnie and Clyde’s personalities it misses the mark but it is a tour-de-force of a Mark Jackson abilities.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazone.com
BONNIE AND CLYDE by Adam Peck. Directed by Mark Jackson. Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. www.shotgunplayers.org.
BONNIE AND CLYDE a fanciful take on the last night of an infamous duo
It is 89 years since infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were gunned down in a fusillade of 130 bullets on a rural road in a Louisiana Parish. It is not a historic milestone that deserves remembrance yet auteur Mark Jackson and the Shotgun Players have produced a realistic and mythical montage of the last night of their lives all compressed into a taut 80 minutes.
Knowing the work of Mark Jackson you are assured to see a theatrical event when he is at the helm. So it is with the play Bonnie and Clyde that was written by Adam Peck a respected English playwright and produced in 2010. By including obscure stage directions the author expected every future director to be original in their staging.
Jackson certainly has taken note of Peck’s desires and has created a mixture of dramatic action, thoughtful inner monologs, fanciful interludes with stunning visual projections and sound. The locale is a barn where the robbers/murders/lovers Bonnie and Clyde (Joe Estlack and Megan Tout) have taken refuge. The evening begins with Clyde reading excerpts from Bonnie’s poem “The Trail’s End” with prophetic lines “That Death is the wages of sin” and “Some day they’ll go down together . . . to few it’ll be grief . . . but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.” The ominous sound effects include barking dogs and gun shots with a recurring video of a spinning car wheel and a black bird/vulture(?) circling overhead.
It is the time of the Great Depression and the era of the Dust Bowl and our duo fancies themselves as the Robin Hoods of their time. The play strongly suggests that they are simply normal people fashioned by the time in which they lived. Many who followed their exploits in newspapers are envious and admiring. The published articles are ego building, especially to Bonnie who wants “show time for Bonnie Parker.”
Bonnie’s caring side becomes evident when Clyde may or may not have killed a pet mouse and she confronts Clyde with a shotgun insisting “That is the worst thing you have ever done!” Really?
Jackson dovetails their loving relationship with dance numbers (think of the play Chicago,) games of Hopscotch and a “let’s pretend wedding.” If the action and visuals were not so intense they would certainly qualify as tongue-in-cheek vignettes.
It is a taut, superbly acted two-hander with a top-notch production crew that predictable ends with a gut-wrenching visual of their ambush. As a white-wash of Bonnie and Clyde’s personalities it misses the mark but it is a tour-de-force of a Mark Jackson abilities.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazone.com
