DEATH BECOMES HIM
In 2016, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star introduced a sound I’d never heard on Broadway—a blend of Americana and bluegrass so distinct it felt like a new musical dialect. Nearly a decade later, that rare sensation returns with Dead Outlaw, the dark and bizarre new musical by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, which opened tonight at the Longacre Theatre. Running just an hour and forty minutes without intermission, the show spans nearly a century—from the late 1800s to the 1970s—with a variety of musical styles: hushed ballads, blistering rock, Americana, rockabilly, and even cabaret.
Trent Saunders, Eddie Cooper, Thom Sesma, Andrew Durand, Dashiell Eaves
Having transferred from its acclaimed Off-Broadway run at Audible Theater—where it swept up Best Musical awards from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Off-Broadway Alliance—the production now finds fresh footing on a larger Broadway stage.
Andrew Durand, Julia Knitel
Director David Cromer—whose Good Night, and Good Luck is playing a few blocks away—and scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado have expanded the world of the show with a creative ingenuity and restraint. There’s no gratuitous spectacle here—just smart, evocative staging that complements the score’s inventiveness at every turn.
The cast
The story, as outlandish as it is true, centers on Elmer McCurdy, a hapless outlaw whose criminal resume was more aspirational than accomplished. Shot dead in a 1911 standoff, McCurdy became famous only posthumously—thanks to a heavy dose of embalming arsenic and a series of bizarre post-mortem adventures that eventually landed his mummified corpse in an amusement park funhouse. It wasn’t until the 1970s that anyone noticed the hanging “mannequin” was, in fact, human and shortly thereafter—finally—buried.
Jeb Brown, Andrew Durand, Eddie Cooper
Itamar Moses’s book—conceived by Yazbek—splits the tale in two: the life of Elmer McCurdy, and the afterlife of his body. It’s a story almost too strange to be true, but it’s told with such humor and charm, you’ll be more enthralled than bewildered.
At the show’s heart is a kick-ass five-piece band planted front and center onstage, driving the score with grit and swagger (music supervision by Dean Sharenow; music direction by Rebekah Bruce). The musicians—JR Atkins, Hank Heaven, Brian Killeen, Spencer Cohen, and the superb Jeb Brown as bandleader/storyteller—don’t just play, they perform with passion that often threatens to blow the roof off. (Brown doubles as narrator and a fellow outlaw, Jarrett).
Andrew Durand and band
Leading the cast is Andrew Durand as Elmer McCurdy. His slim/slight build and tenor voice initially casts him as an unlikely object of romantic desire. But as his character spirals into drunken rage and incompetent crime, Durand’s stature becomes an asset—his volatility made viscerally clear as if partially suffering from a Napoleon complex. His vocals are versatile: he opens with a tender ballad and later unleashes a face-melting punk anthem that rattles the rafters. His greatest feat, though, may be in the second half when he remains unnervingly still—first on the coroner’s slab, then upright in an open coffin.
Thom Sesma
The six remaining cast members juggle multiple roles with lightning-fast costume changes, thanks to Sarah Laux’s smart, character-defining design. Thom Sesma is a standout as Thomas Noguchi, coroner for this crazy case, better-known for autopsies of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. His number, “Up to the Stars,” performed in gleeful cabaret style, is an unexpected delight—a moment of sheer theatrical joy that earned the biggest applause of the second half of the one-act.
Jeb Brown and band
Heather Gilbert’s lighting design shifts seamlessly between murky noir and full-throttle rock concert, including a few overzealous cues that shine directly at the audience with a bit too much aggression. Even so, like the rest of the production, the lighting embraces variety and boldness, adding to the musical’s unique sensibility.
Dead Outlaw is not your typical Broadway fare. It’s strange, stirring, unexpected, and wholly original.
The cast
photos by Matthew Murphy
Trent Saunders
Dead Outlaw
Longacre Theatre, 220 W 48th
open run
for tickets, visit Telecharge or dead outlaw musical
Gregory Fletcher is an author, a theater professor, a playwright, director, and stage manager. His craft book on playwriting is entitled Shorts and Briefs, and publishing credits include two YA novels (Other People’s Crazy, and Other People’s Drama), 2 novellas in the series Inclusive Bedtime Stories, 2 short stories in The Night Bazaar series, and several essays. Website, Facebook, Instagram.
