Dead Outlaw, the new musical from the team that created the moodily romantic 2017 Tony winner The Band’s Visit, is a raucously absurdist tale about, well, a dead outlaw. A real-life one, no less, although details are more sketchy than not (which gives freer rein to fanciful authorial flights). An Audible presentation down at their Minetta Lane Theatre, Dead Outlaw seems to fall outside that company’s typical ready-for-audiobook (or derived-from-audiobook) fare. Rather, this is a blazingly sharp Broadway musical in development, which—in its first full staging—already has plenty of what it takes to slay ’em uptown.
The aforementioned team are songwriters David Yazbek and newcomer-to-the-group Erik Della Penna, bookwriter Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer. Yazbek stumbled upon a story about—get this—a stagehand for a network action series (The Six Million Dollar Man) who, while preparing a location in Long Beach, California, in 1976 found what looked like an old prop but turned out to be an embalmed corpse. An autopsy determined this was the body of one Elmer McCurdy (1880-1911), which after his death in a shoot-out had been ballyhooed as a carnival sideshow attraction and ultimately left to accumulate dust.
The authors fill in the blanks in the tale of this desperado, who appears to have been a wannabe Jesse James; he engineered a great train robbery, for example, but attacked the wrong train. In any event, the musical comedy version of McCurdy (Andrew Durand) is a scowling ne’er-do-well with a penchant for alcohol, a hair-trigger fuse that sets him a-feudin’ and fightin’, and a singing voice that switches from rock hard (or hard rock) to angelic at the drop of a downbeat.
The action begins with McCurdy riding a freight car through Oklahoma in the middle of a moon-beamed night. If the musical Oklahoma! opens with a cowhand singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” Dead Outlaw begins with the equally lovely “The Stars Are Bright” which might as well be called “Oh, What a Beautiful Evenin’.” After which the composers launch into their thumping rock score, starting with the explosive and very funny “Dead.” “Abe Lincoln’s dead, Frank James is dead, your mama’s dead” devolves into Dillinger, John Gotti, Balzac and—if your ears do not deceive you—“Tupac’s dead” and “Bert Convy’s dead.” Likely the first time Balzac-Tupac-Convy were joined in one verse, but that’s David Yazbek for you. (Yazbek, the composer-lyricist of such musicals as The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scandals, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, is just about the only contemporary theater-writer capable of emulating the craft of the great Frank Loesser.)
Dead Outlaw is composed of two parts within an intermissionless 90 minutes. “The Life of Elmer McCurdy” shows our hero’s upbringing and downfall. This, alas, begins to lag in the latter stages and might well bear some additional spadework by the creators. (The large band platform, which seems to take up about two-thirds of the small Minetta stage, restricts staging choices—although they do make inventive use of the roof of the band wagon.) The moment they vroom into “The Death of Elmer McCurdy,” though, the show moves onto macabre ground and into high gear, never letting down until the final chord.
As with The Band’s Visit, director Cromer keeps the action moving and our attention engaged by altering the tone and conjuring up some lovely stage pictures. Cromer has been on a remarkable run of late, with stunning work in both Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God and Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic; his adeptness at musicals—unusual musicals, at that—goes back to the memorable 2008 Adding Machine (also at Minetta Lane). The confines of stage and house constrict scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado and movement director Ani Taj, but lighting designer Heather Gilbert (of the impeccably-lit Parade and The Sound Inside) makes fine use of her opportunities.
Durand is properly roisterous as the “live” outlaw and remarkably controlled as the (mostly) dead one. With his broad forehead and wavy locks, the actor has been prominent of late in farce musicals (Shucked, Head Over Heels). His appearance here reminds us of his underlying acting abilities, evident in The Burnt Part Boys, Yank!, and as Albert in War Horse. Julia Knitel, heretofore unknown to us, is impressive as McCurdy’s Oklahoma girlfriend and, later, as a bobbysoxer besotted with his corpse. (It’s that kind of musical.) She manages to pull this off, and—when warranted—joins Durand in the gentler musical moments. The other six players, moving through multiple roles, are excellent. Standing out are Trent Saunders, in his guise as a long-distance runner, and Ken Marks, as a young Lt. Douglas MacArthur (this part is true, they tell us) singing a paean to nitroglycerine. Thom Sesma, as coroner Thomas Noguchi, almost steals the show with a way-over-the-top glorification of celebrity autopsies, “Up to the Stars.”
As for the band, it is crackling. The songwriters have orchestrated their score in collaboration with music supervisor Dean Sharenow, and they hit the right tone for this marvelously contrived musical. (If only we could hear all the lyrics over that high-octane band; but that’s an issue of electronic instruments on a small stage in a small house.) Rebekah Bruce serves as music director while playing piano and occasionally backing up Knitel’s vocals when a second non-male voice is warranted. Composer Della Penna is on the bandstand as well, playing guitar and banjo (and beginning the show on a lap steel guitar). Serving as bandleader is Jeb Brown, who is listed in the Playbill as an actor but fronts the band (guitar/vocals) when he is not stepping into the action to play one of several roles. Also prominent is a guitarist who uses the name HANK, who has a lovely solo in “Up to the Stars” and also joins Bruce to occasionally back up Knitel.
Dead Outlaw is one of those unthinkably unwieldy-sounding ideas that turns out—in the right hands—to make a rip-roarin’ bullseye of a new-style musical. A wider stage space, and a larger house where the excellent band can be modulated, will make it even better. Scattered seats are still available for the already extended run, if you act quick. We’ll look forward to seeing the show again, hopefully with this cast and band, in its next guise.
Dead Outlaw opened March 10, 2024, at the Minetta Lane Theatre and runs through April 14. Tickets and information: audible.com
