Premiered in the US more than a decade ago and after a successful run on the West End, this tale of daring and death is now touring and currently on stage at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre.

Telling the story of the Barrow Gang and their trail of destruction across America before they were killed in a gun fight, it’s a mix of high drama and personal introspection.

Created by a stellar team of music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black and book by Ivan Menchell the musical aims not to justify the actions of Bonnie, Clyde, Clyde’s brother Buck and Buck’s wife Blanche but to put them in context so audiences have a better understanding of them than a cut and dried tale of bad and good.

In doing so, the story reveals the poverty and hardship experienced by poor people during the Great Depression, we see Clyde being abused while in prison as a young man and we watch them all facing moral quandaries.

The focus is very much on the gang with their victims left unnamed and rarely seen - as though the actual killings take place in a shadow land and are a background to the personal battles the gang members are going through.

And it makes for a rip-roaring tale in which, bizarrely, the audience is rooting for a couple of people who we certainly wouldn’t have wanted to meet down a dark alley at night.

Katie Tonkinson’s Bonnie is a woman with big dreams who falls hopelessly in love with the bad boy Clyde. We see her as a divided personality, one who says she wants to leave Clyde and yet she also glorifies him in poetry and loves reading of their exploits in the paper. She also knows their adventure cannot have a happy ending and ponders this in the beautifully sung Dyin’ Ain’t So Bad in which she is unable to picture a life without Clyde.

Alex James-Hatton gives us a multi-faceted Clyde who has a reason for his actions - poverty and exploitation - and yet also appears to revel in the power and notoriety they bring. He pays a little lip service to regret at killing people but also enjoys wielding a gun - as epitomized in his anthem Raise a Little Hell.

The moral compass of the piece is Buck’s wife Blanche, a church-attending woman who begs her husband to leave the gangster life, even forcing him back to jail when he escapes. Played with real heart by Catherine Tyldesley, Blanche’s love for Buck means she will follow wherever he goes - even when she opposes his actions.

Sam Ferriday is the luckless Buck torn between loyalty to his wife and his brother and yet unable to be true to them both. He struggles to find a solution as he pulls one way then the other and pays the penalty for making the wrong choice.

There are strong performances throughout the cast with Jaz Ellington clearly enjoying playing a charismatic preacher man and Daniel Reid-Walters as the law enforcer Ted Hinton who can’t help loving Bonnie.

Designed by Philip Witcomb, the set and costumes clearly put us in the period with some great classic cars and twenties’ outfits. The set, which is largely grey with prison bars and bullet holes reminds us throughout the production of where the story is heading.

Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, this is a gun-toting piece of entertainment which also has the audience thinking - are such crimes ever justified and how much are people’s actions determined by their circumstances? The show doesn’t provide easy answers but it does give us a great musical which looks likely to run and run.

Four stars

Reviewed by Diane Parkes at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre on Tuesday 5 March. Bonnie & Clyde continues to show at the venue until Saturday 9 March.  The show then returns to the Midlands later in the year, playing Birmingham Hippodrome from Tuesday 3 to Saturday 7 September.