“Dead Outlaw,” a darkly comic musical that tells the ghoulish true tale about a corpse from the Old West, has been resurrected, opening tonight on Broadway, with the same cast and creative team as its brief run Off-Broadway at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater, which ended last April. Reaction to the show included Best Musical Awards from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Off-Broadway Alliance, as well as my outlier review, slightly reworded below, adding new photographs from the Broadway production, and new information about venue and prices
Elmer J. McCurdy was killed in a shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies in Oklahoma in 1911, but took 66 years to be buried, his mummified remains having been exhibited all that time by a series of macabre showmen.
It took much less time for the novelty to wear off for me that a Tony-winning team of theater artists had put together a musical about such a bizarre true story. Composer David Yazbek, librettist Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer are not merely a higher caliber of macabre showmen; they are the team behind “The Band’s Visit,” and their talent is reflected in some of the cleverer musical numbers in their latest show, backed by a busy ensemble and a felicitous folk-rock band.
But this self-conscious slice of Americana winds up almost as creepy as clever, and less resonant than it might intend.
The opening number sets the cheeky tone for the show, with the bandleader (Jeb Brown) introducing us to “the dead outlaw Elmer McCurdy,” before he’s killed, “a slight man, with small eyes “ sitting around a campfire. Andrew Durand as Elmer lies on the roof of the bandshell under a starry nighttime, and sings a sweetly melancholy ballad with lyrics like
when the stars are bright like these stars
so they almost hurt your eyes
it’s like, maybe God is singing you a song.
Then abruptly, in a harsh gravelly voice, Elmer rasps: “All right, boys. Let’s go rob that fuckin’ train.”
The band then goes full-on rockabilly, the story backtracks, and we learn of Elmer’s sorry childhood and troubled youth, his heavy drinking, and his employment as first a plumber, then coal miner then a soldier in the U.S. army.
This leads to an occupation for which he proves uniquely incompetent – a robber of banks and trains.
Elmer alive takes up roughly the first half of the 100-minute show, until the shoot-out. Durand spends the rest of the show as a body (with the help of Heather Gilbert’s lighting, he even looks convincingly waxy.)
His body makes its first appearance in the local coroner’s office. When nobody can be found to claim his body, the coroner adds arsenic to the embalming fluid as a preservative so that it will not decay. Gawkers become intrigued, and the coroner starts charging for a peek. Thus begins the body’s more than half-century journey as an exhibit.
After a while, the coroner sells the body to a traveling carnival, and then it is sold again as a unique extra in exploitation movies (and in the theater lobbies,) then to a wax museum. He is even used as a traveling sideshow for a cross-country footrace to promote the newly constructed Route 66 – which features the story of the winner of that race, a Native American named Andy Payne, portrayed by Trent Saunders, who gets one of the better songs in the show.
Eventually, the body winds up as part of a Halloween-style ride on a pier in Long Branch, California. It is discovered there by a member of the crew of the TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” who realizes that, among the made-up ghosts and goblins, these are actual human remains.
There are enough incredible details along the way that the bandleader occasionally reminds us: “This is a true story.”
At this point in the story, the body is turned over to the chief coroner of Los Angeles, Thomas Noguchi, portrayed by Thom Sesma, who – in a highlight — suddenly becomes a full-on Tony Bennett crooner, with David Yazbek’s perfect impersonation of a jazz standard — although the lyrics are cringeworthy boasts of the coroner having hobnobbed with famous corpses like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
Some have argued that the creators of “Dead Outlaw” are making a point about American culture – the culture of celebrity and of anything-for-a-buck, the infatuation with violent men and the Old West.
It’s hard for me to see any such serious intent, when I compare what they are doing here with what they did on “The Band’s Visit,” about a group of Egyptian musicians who get stranded in a small isolated town in Israel. That was certainly quirky, but there was a deep, unspoken resonance in the initially awkward encounters between Arabs and Jews; it demonstrated the powerful purpose that theater can serve.
‘”Dead Outlaw” is a lark, the kind of idea hatched at a late night smoke-hazed party in a college dorm that would normally not survive under the light of the following day. That it has survived and even thrived – transferred to Broadway! – is surely a testament to the talent, persistence and ingenuity (if not consistent good taste) of its creators. Like Elmer McCurdy himself, “Dead Outlaw” lives on.
Dead Outlaw
Longacre Theater
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $48 – $281
Music and lyrics by David Yazbek & Erik Della Penna.
Book by Itamar Moses,
Conceived by David Yazbek
Directed by David Cromer.
Choreographed by Ani Taj
Scenic Design by Arnulfo Maldonado; Costume Design by Sarah Laux; Lighting Design by Heather Gilbert; Sound Design by Kai Harada; hair and wig design and make-up design by J. Jared Janas.
Music orchestrated by Erik Della Penna, Dean Sharenow and David Yazbek; Musical Director: Rebekah Bruce; Music arranged by Erik Della Penna, Dean Sharenow and David Yazbek;
Musical Supervisor: Dean Sharenow; Piano, Organ, Vocals: Rebekah Bruce; Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Vocals: JR Atkins; Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Lap Steel, Mandolin, Vocals: Hank Heaven; Bass: Brian Killeen; Drums: Spencer Cohen; Copyist and Music Assistant: Nick Potocki; Electronic Music Design: Billy Jay Stein, Hiro Iida and Strange Cranium; MainBrain/Ableton Programmers: Chris Petti and Steven Tran
Cast: Jeb Brown, Eddie Cooper, Andrew Durand, Dashiell Eaves, Julia Knitel, Ken Marks, Trent Saunders, and Thom Sesma.
