Bonnie and Clyde at Shotgun Players in Berkeley

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Performance
Analysis
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

In some way, it appears entirely appropriate that Berkeley’s Shotgun players revived the legend of criminals Bonnie and Clyde. The renowned gangsters stormed the Ashby podium. While there, they ran from the law and got close to their gory and well-chronicled trail of robberies and killings through the American South. Bonnie and Clyde get into an abandoned shed to hide. Bonnie holds a gun in each palm and Clyde grips a shotgun.

British scriptwriter, Adam Peck, composed the entire drama. Peck’s stage edition of the Bonnie and Clyde tale is not actually anything like the esteemed 1967 film edition apart for the fundamental details of the tale. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker spearheaded what came to be recognized as the Barrow Gang.

The actors on the Ashby podium went on board with a set of crimes in Texas and Oklahoma from 1932 to 1934. Revolving around a true story, Berkeley’s Shotgun players reenact the most famous moments of Bonnie and Clyde’s lives and events on the Ashby Stage through a magnificent and capturing performance.

Performance

Adam Peck wrote the Berkeley performance and Mark Jackson directed it. Ashby Stage hosted the performance for an estimated period of one hour and ten minutes. The actors crafted a fascinating spell on the audience despite performing to a crowd that largely knows how the story unfolds. It is worth stating that foreknowledge did not detract the audience from the play. Instead, it added to the tension and even anticipation in the drama.

Peck and Jackson depended on the tale’s awareness to complete the play’s history and brief future. At the same time, Peck and Jackson concentrated on the criminals’ final days of fleeing. Actors Megan Trout and Joe Estlack dwell in their current and fantasy worlds. These worlds have a magnetic focus that makes the viewer briefly forget their performance in their iconic fifties’ film. The performance was not a minor feat.

Shift passages switch and occasionally overlay with conversation scenes as Bonnie and Clyde hide in a remote barn. Peck developed this screenplay in 2010 while in England. In the process, Peck highlights Bonnie and Clyde’s emotional state and details, and moving and crude positions. This way, unsuspecting viewers can predict the ending of the story.

For instance, while both outlaws nurse injuries, they are still tense, proud, and worn out. Estlack manages to portray a solid Clyde character that is courageous with a feminine touch.

This makes the play’s Clyde more distracted of the two actors than that of the esteemed 1967 film. Apparently, Clyde’s mind is obsessive about the miserable plans, forewarning, and seething rage against corporate America, which seemingly stole the American dream.

On the other hand, actor Trout craves Bonnie. This is evident when Bonnie sternly invests in concealing any weaknesses. At the same time, Trout shows how Bonnie teased and tempted Clyde by reading newspaper articles and visions of celebrities. Bonnie and Clyde’s argue because Bonnie is still jealous of the husband she left and emphasizes they be buried next to each to other.

Bonnie and Clyde lightly engage in sex, which is the one of the director’s most tasteful pieces. Afterwards, Bonnie and Clyde climb the barriers and start playing charming games of imaginary hopscotch. Extreme buzzes and bright beams penetrate the wide slats of Robert Broadfoot’s strangely abandoned barn.

The performance also entailed stylish shift segments. Jackson, the protagonists, and choreographer designed these segments and managed to lure viewers to their thoughts. A vivid mimetic routine summarizes Bonnie and Clyde’s lives up to this moment. Sharp jazz era dances depict Bonnie’s previous dreams of famous television success. Estlack’s ever-more-detailed premonitions explain their destiny in highly efficient conditions.

Trout managed to enhance these conditions properly through his bullet-punctured writhing and explicit archival plans. The performance of Berkeley Shotgun players is no more real to the facts of the film than any other stage version of Bonnie and Clyde’s lives.

Analysis

In spite of excellence in performance, many of the details about the Bonnie and Clyde legend remain in conflict. For instance, people widely hold the notion that Bonnie began using one leg after one incident with the law. Nonetheless, the Shotgun players’ performance is less an effort to repeat history or legend than a thought on the fundamental humanity of Bonnie and Clyde in words and acting.

Two of Bonnie’s poetic pieces merged the drama with the legend to expand its influence by printing them on the platform. More particularly, Bonnie said, “Someday they’ll go down together, they’ll bury them side by side” (Treherne 194). In a rhythmic format, Bonnie proceeded to say, “To few it’ll be grief, / to the law a relief/ but its death for Bonnie and Clyde” (Treherne 194).

These quotes made Peck’s screenplay appear like a small effort to the legend as narrated in tens of years of film and music. However, it is an intense and convincing effort. The convincing sounds of crickets in Matt Stines’ sound plan were enough to lure the audience to Bonnie and Clyde’s realm.

Berkeley’s performance was relatively the actual incidence since there were a lot of requests for a look into where Bonnie and Clyde met their doom. However, the demand did not make any difference because the 1967 film made Bonnie and Clyde a legend in American folklore. The same effect can be seen in the Robin Hood motif of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor in ancient West mythology.

Nonetheless, the Shotgun players primed the dramatic version of the Bonnie and Clyde legend. This is because Peck’s poetic play provided a new perspective on the exclusively American myth as it discloses on the Ashby Stage. The team manages to present a multimedia mood piece that catches Bonnie and Clyde’s tale on stage through sound, imagery, dance, and conversation. This forms a poetic narration of the legend.

Estlack and Trout do a fantastic job of making characters that are fairly unearthly and romantic. At the same time, the actors keep their raw remote edges. Estlack’s Clyde is a short-tempered and gunslinging character who appears both in full of admiration and love for Bonnie. On the other hand, Trout apparently makes Bonnie the smart one of the couple.

Bonnie is also a person who views Clyde as the classic “knight on a white stallion” who removed her from her dull life (Treherne 194). It is worth mentioning that Bonnie has a tattoo inspired by her separated husband. This is a permanent mark that haunts Clyde in a number of ways.

This is also one of the few facts that act to narrate the legend in a wonderful manner. Peck writes several changes in a number of places of his screenplay. These changes allow the director to build individual and connective matters that connect the acts and complete the back story.

The director, Jackson, applies sound, video, and dance designs in the changes made to form a robust mood in the performance. The outcome is a satisfying performance that wavers on but never falls into the world of the daintily aesthetic. Peck’s screenplay has its own fascinating difficulty as the audience attempts to determine the nature of Bonnie and Clyde’s relationship.

This can be easily mistaken for a faulty feat and perhaps ignorant shift by the director and writer. This is because Clyde appears much more physically devoted in Bonnie and her role in the relationship than she did in history or film. However, there’s no doubt that Bonnie and Clyde intensely connected to one another on stage and in real-life. Part of that relationship entails the indisputable excitement of being famous criminals.

They take pleasure in media attention. This is evident when Bonnie pictures herself the star of the vaudeville podium. At the same time, Clyde worries about a newspaper that connected a homicide to him that he did not commit.

Conclusion

Revolving around a true story, Berkeley’s Shotgun players reenact the most famous moments of Bonnie and Clyde’s lives and events on the Ashby Stage through a magnificent and capturing performance. Within a short period, the audience is sure that Bonnie and Clyde’s adventures can paint an entire image.

Shotgun players’ performance teaches enough to realize that Bonnie and Clyde were remarkably overenthusiastic about revenging the country’s political and economic system. This makes it painful to view the newsreel footage of the real Bonnie and Clyde as shot-up corpses at the end of the play.

Works Cited

Treherne, Jake. The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde. California: Cooper Square Press, 2000. Print.

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