Unlike the mobile British corpse in “Operation Mincemeat,” the traveling American cadaver in the Broadway musical “Dead Outlaw” has a far less noble posthumous purpose than winning World War II.
This stiff just wants a little space in the spotlight — but how he finally achieves celebrity is not exactly what he had in mind.
On the surface, “Dead Outlaw” is a boisterous and wildly entertaining show that should attract young audiences who like their entertainment bold, bracing and outrageous. But amid the delicious quirkiness in the telling and the macabre nature of the narrative, it has something to say about a nation’s mythology and our own sooner-than-you-think mortality.
Following its well-received Off Broadway run produced by Audible last year, the musical retains its wickedness, vibrancy and nerve, as well as its extraordinary ensemble of actors. It also has Arnulfo Maldonado’s giant cube of a set, housing its kick-ass band, honkytonk ambiance and much of the action.
The musical reunites three creators of the Tony-winning “The Band’s Visit”: director David Cromer, composer David Yazbek, and writer Itamar Moses, whose book for “Dead Outlaw” gives new meaning to “deadpan humor” as he slyly and concisely tells a wild Americana story that’s mostly true — with the nuttiest parts being the factual ones.
The show is narrated by a bandleader (Jeb Brown), who with Brechtian flair has the assured demeanor of a master yarn-spinner who knows he has a killer tale to tell. Brown relates the incident-packed story of the life and afterlife of bad boy Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand), born in Maine in 1880 to a fragmented family. Breaking out of his boxed-in existence, troubled childhood and violent adolescence, he aimlessly heads West by train seeking freedom on the open road and the possibility of “a normal life.”
But “normal” isn’t in his DNA. Hot-tempered, alcoholic, rootless and resentful, Elmer just can’t find his place as a plumber or miner. Even a stint in the Army only leaves him more embittered, unmoored and desperate.
A chance encounter in jail with a gang leader entices him instead to join the outlaw life. But Elmer is equally incompetent there, too, robbing the wrong train, failing at safecracking, miscalculating explosives and getting ignobly killed by lawmen in an Oklahoma shootout in 1911.
But that’s not even the craziest part. Finally for Elmer, who dreamt of celebrity, death becomes him.
Over the next 65 years, Elmer’s unclaimed, highly embalmed and well-traveled corpse achieves a kind of low-level fame. He becomes a sideshow attraction, a wax museum exhibit, a lobby display and a prop in exploitation films, until finally what remains of his remains ends up dangling from a noose as part of a spook house at a Long Beach amusement park. All of this and more is condensed in Cromer’s riveting, essentials-only direction.
In 1976, the deteriorating mummy is discovered by a Teamster seeking locations for television’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” and Elmer receives a second autopsy by Thomas Noguchi (Thom Sesma), L.A.’s famed “coroner to the stars,” before this failed outlaw reaches his final dead end.
The strong score by the always surprising Yazbek (“The Full Monty,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”) and Erik Della Penna is filled with American song styles that span a century’s worth of musical genres, including bluegrass, pop, folk and rockabilly.
As Elmer, Durand (“Shucked”) has the right mix of boyish charm and bandit snarl. He can be simply dreamy singing a ballad to the stars or punk out with toxic masculine rage in “Killed a Man in Maine.” (He didn’t.) Durand’s stage presence is undeniable, even as a corpse spending half the show in an upright open coffin.
The other actors in the terrific eight-member cast — which includes Eddie Cooper, Dashiell Eaves and Ken Marks — play multiple roles as townsfolk, family members, lawmen, desperados, hucksters and suckers.
There are several musical moments that step away from Elmer’s posthumous odyssey. A few are by the sole female in the show, Julia Knitel, a marvel whether playing Elmer’s abandoned sweetheart or a young girl who finds a relatable confidante in a corpse. Sesma has a forensic showstopper when Noguchi turns into a Vegas showman with a fabulously cheesy and cheeky lounge number, “Up in the Stars.” Trent Saunders is also a standout as Andy Payne, the Cherokee runner who won the first cross-country road race event in 1928 — with Elmer’s corpse a traveling side attraction.
While these songs don’t address Elmer directly, they feature stark perspectives on the show’s themes of freedom, choice and mortality. Some may find the lack of an emotional connection to the characters and story off-putting. But others will see that the dispassionate distancing gives the work its punch as it shows that the American brand of freedom is not only bunk but bonkers, and that dead or alive, you’re just a commodity.
Making the audience feel even squirmier is the show’s ongoing refrain of death as destiny. One in-your-face number is unrelenting in its insistence in acknowledging that we’re all going to be — if not a dead outlaw — a dead something else, suggesting you should choose your act wisely in this sideshow of a life.