Thelma & Louise review – musical hoedown is a bland and baffling wrong turn

‘Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” These words were written by Mary Shelley two centuries ago but could apply to the two runaways in Ridley Scott’s 1991 film who turn into highway fugitives in their liberating cross-country road trip after a girls’ weekend goes wrong.

Thelma & Louise, starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, did not exactly represent Shelley’s “monstrous feminine” but came to be seen as an era-defining feminist parable on freedom from male strictures and abuse. It caught the cultural zeitgeist, the title becoming a byword for sisterhood, with reams written about its feminist layers, spectacular cinematography – and the shock of its un-Hollywood ending.

So it is a brave creative team that decides to adapt the film for the stage. It helps this production’s credentials that the original screenwriter, Callie Khouri, is on board for the book. It also has two capable leads in Rachel Tucker, who plays the tough-cookie Louise, and Amy Lennox as Thelma, the put-upon wife turned fantastically rogue.

Beyond that, the intention around this musical adaptation of the road movie is entirely perplexing. Significantly, there is neither road nor car, bar a fleeting glimpse of the latter at the beginning, upturned and static. Streaking neon lights and the sounds of a revving motor denote their journey. “I want the wind in my hair,” sings Thelma at one point. We do too, Thelma.

Fans of the film can forget those glorious scenes of the women’s turquoise convertible Thunderbird, and of the magnificently lonely desert, both of which felt like characters in their own right. Instead, the backdrop is a prosaic saloon bar – the fateful one they visit where a drunk man attempts to rape Thelma and is shot dead by Louise.

That incident comes early, so the women’s fear of its consequences eclipses their initial joy and release. Their characters remain flatly dichotomous: Thelma is the flirty conventional one, Louise haranguing and hard-bitten. The narrative plays out as two women on the run. You wish for more depth, more bonding between them, which does come in the second half when the show finally fires up, but it still feels like empowerment-lite.

Under the direction of Trip Cullman, the characters seem dated and the time-frame wavers uncertainly between the 1980s and now. Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber’s choreography brings hoedown moves and line dancing men in 10-gallon hats. There are few memorable songs in Neko Case’s country score, although one reprised number takes flight in the heartfelt It Was Worth It. The southern twangs are dialled up to 10, and lyrics offer exposition with plodding lines, although the singing is strong.

The sexy young grifter JD – the character that launched the young, incandescent Brad Pitt on film – is patina-thin and played by Jordan Luke Gage. Lead detective Hal (Trevor Dion Nicholas) is also barely there as a character. None of it is powered by enough emotion. When the road trip ends at the mouth of the Grand Canyon, the women’s T-Bird surrounded by police and revving dangerously, you are moved not by what is unravelling before you but by the memory of the unforgettable, defiant ending of the film. Did they really just do that?