Drab by comparison to the film: Bonnie & Clyde, at the Garrick Theatre, reviewed

The murderous odyssey of Bonnie and Clyde is a tricky subject for a musical because the characters are such loathsome wasters and their grisly ambition is to fleece poor people at gunpoint during the Great Depression. They’re famous for stealing from banks but they changed tack once they realised that grocery stores and funeral parlours were easier to rob. The little guy was their real target. In this revived musical, written in 2009, the principal figures have no redeeming qualities at all. Bonnie is a beautiful brain-dead popsicle who dreams of becoming a poet or a movie star. Nowadays she’d be ranting on TikTok from the front seat of an SUV. Clyde is an amoral thug who shoots dead anyone who comes between him and his greed. His chief aim is to outdo the questionable achievements of Al Capone. The pair killed 13 people during their reign of terror and this gory headcount is announced in the opening scene, which also features the notorious ‘death car’ whose bullet-riddled coachwork is one of the story’s enduring symbols.