BONNIE & CLYDE - THE MUSICAL

How do you have Bonnie & Clyde The Musical end without a bang?! Director Jeff Calhoun, who I admit I am not a fan of, does next to nothing with Frank Wildhorn’s musical in La Jolla. Very little happens onstage except singing pop ballads. But it’s not a complete disaster thanks to it’s two leads, Laura Osnes (Broadway’s Nellie Forbush in South Pacific) is a hot & feisty Bonnie with a sweet powerful singing voice, Stark Sands as Clyde has matinee idol looks and a voice perfectly suited to the pop songs but is lacking the edgeiness of an outlaw. Mr Calhoun keeps him naked and shirtless as much as possible (wonder why?)

The show is basically a love story which makes it very compatable for musicalization and there are some very nice songs here but the style doesn’t fit the substance. Bonnie & Clyde shouldn’t sing pop ballads, it diminishes the edginess (the same problem Lestat had). The ensemble law & order songs are completely forgettable.

Granted the requisite chase scenes are challanges for designers but no one even tried here, no chases and bad gun work with very fake blood leading to an ending thats leaves us to recall what happeneed rather then tackle any excitement onstage is a real problem all pointed at the incappabilities of it’s director. With some revamping and alot of needed edginess, Bonnie & Clyde could be a wonderful show, but this production isn.’t it

WHISPER HOUSE

Oh for the days when musicals were actually constructed, the music revealing character, insight and advancing the plot, WHISPER HOUSE, Duncan Sheik’s (Spring Awakening) new musical having it’s premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, has none of this, it just seems like laziness.

There’s a maudlin story set inside a lighthouse on the New England coast in the 1940’s involving a spinster, an orphan and a Japanese man (what a Japanese man is doing unnoticed on the brink of World War is anyone’s guess). The characters are all stereotypes and not one sings.

It’s revealed that a decade or so earlier there was a shipwreck because the lighthouse was not illuminated. Nine musicians drowned, but for an unknown reason only two are now ghosts and haunting the lighthouse, supposedly if they kill someone they will be set free, but they never even try, they just sing. These two punk ghosts randomly walk around the set throughout scenes making faces and moving objects. Only the orphan boy can sometimes see them, why him and why only sometimes, who knows. Then at any given moment they pick up instruments and sing bland contemporary pop songs. The songs don’t reveal character development or move the story along and just showing projections on a scrim behind them during these songs doesn’t cover up that nothing is happening. Mr. Sheik, this is an album concept, have a concert, this isn’t musical theatre.

WHISPER HOUSE makes one appreciate the stage craft of SPRING AWAKENING even more. The theatricality of the combined staging, colorful moody lighting, exciting choreography, youthful cast & teen angst captured as part rock concert of the contemporary score. None of which is apparent here.

The cast is across the board adequate. Celeste Ciulla who has replaced Mare Winningham midway through the run just seems like the understudy. The two ghostly singers, David Poe & Holly Brook, are quite good but the music is repetitive and unmemorable.

There’s nothing haunting in WHISPER HOUSE, but you might die of boredom.