Photo Flash: First Look at New Line Theatre's BONNIE & CLYDE

New Line Theatre, "the bad boy of musical theatre," opens its 24th season of adult, alternative musical theatre with the St. Louis premiere of the new musical BONNIE & CLYDE, running Oct. 2-25, 2014. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast below!

The New Line season opens in October with the Broadway musical BONNIE & CLYDE, a kind of horror Romeo and Juliet story, exploring the culture that created this infamous couple and their two-year murder spree, the moral ambiguity of Prohibition and the Great Depression, and a national cult of celebrity that turned these damaged, dangerous kids into national folk heroes, in their twisted quest for dignity in a time of national humiliation. Bloomberg News called the show, "a pop romance about the American nightmare." Today, in this time of economic distress in America, this story seems more relevant than ever. Not only could it happen again; it does.

With music by Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Wonderland), lyrics by Don Black (Tell Me on a Sunday, Aspects of Love, Sunset Blvd.) and a script by Ivan Menchell, the show follows Bonnie and Clyde's brutal, two-year crime-spree, capturing vividly this lost society in which kids like these could imagine only one path to security and dignity, and that was celebrity, at the point of a gun. Clyde sees in Al Capone and Billy the Kid the only role models who haven't been humiliated by the Depression. Bonnie sees in Clara Bow the freedom, privilege, and escape she craves. As Clyde says in the show, "I am never going to be set free. Freedom is something I gotta steal." When all America's institutions were failing, Bonnie and Clyde made their own rules, and that made them heroes to millions of ordinary Americans struggling themselves under the weight of poverty and hopelessness. In a time when the law itself was an object of ridicule, thanks to the failed experiment of Prohibition, Bonnie and Clyde stood in for "a nation of scofflaws" who no longer respected the law or even recognized it as legitimate.

The New Line cast includes Matt Pentecost (Clyde), Larissa White (Bonnie), Brendan Ochs (Buck), Sarah Porter (Blanche), Reynaldo Arceno (Ted Hinton), Zachary Allen Farmer (Preacher), Christopher "Zany" Clark (Sheriff Schmid), Mara Bollini, Kent Coffel, Joel Hackbarth, Alison Helmer, Ann Hier, Marshall Jennings, Nellie Mitchell, Kimi Short, and Christopher Strawhun. Scott Miller and Mike Dowdy direct the show, with music direction by Jeffrey Carter, scenic and lighting design by Rob Lippert, costume design by Sarah Porter and Marcy Wiegert, and sound design by Josh Stanton.

More information about the show can be found on the New Line website at www.newlinetheatre.com/bonniepage.html.

Photo Credit: Jill Ritter Lindberg

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