Review: Dead Outlaw Is a New Musical About an Infamous Corpse 

I’ve never seen a leading man so stiff. And that’s a compliment when it comes to Dead Outlaw, the jaw-dropping new musical by David Yazbek (music and lyrics), Erik Della Penna (music and lyrics), and Itamar Moses (book). It is now making its world premiere with Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre, the first musical commissioned by the audiobook and theater producer. It’s a doozy of a debut and a sharp departure from the writers’ last show.

Yazbek and Moses previously collaborated on The Band’s Visit, the Tony Award-winning musical about a group of Egyptian musicians temporarily stranded in rural Israel. Where that show was achingly emotional and restrained, Dead Outlaw is rollicking and bracingly unsentimental. The writers have reunited with Band’s Visit director David Cromer, a dark wizard of the stage whose powers seem to grow daily. They have taken a huge risk with Dead Outlaw, both in form and content, and it pays off spectacularly. This is a true tale so bizarre and perverse, it could only happen (and then be musicalized) in America.

It’s about Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand), a troubled young man living at the turn of the 20^th-century who, seeing no better prospects, turns to a life of crime. But as with all his previous endeavors, he’s not a very good at it and dies in a shootout in 1911 at the age of 30. That’s when the show really comes alive.

With no family members to claim the body, Elmer’s corpse is traded from one unsavory huckster to the next. He’s featured in traveling sideshows, wax museums, lobby displays for B movies, and finally, a haunted amusement park ride. It’s only in 1976 that a set dresser for The Six Million Dollar Man discovers that the shriveled mannequin hanging from a noose in that funhouse was, in fact, a real person.

It ain’t My Fair Lady. Yazbek and Della Penna make that clear from the outset, when they chase a tearful lullaby (sweetly sung by Durand) with the rambunctious anthem “Dead” (lyrics: “Balzac is dead / Tupac is dead / Anne Frank is Dead / And so are you”). Their score initially seems to exist on the rock-punk spectrum (the latter becomes especially pronounced when Durand punches through a tambourine during the song “Killed a Man in Maine”). Later, they indulge in pastiche as Elmer’s corpse passes through some of the most significant decades of American music.

Embracing Elmer’s outlaw spirit, they occasionally verge on outright theft. The barbershop-vaudeville number “Our Dear Brother” bears a striking resemblance to “Makin’ Whoopee” (which just entered the public domain this year). And the lounge number “Up to the Stairs” feels like a mashup of “Mack the Knife” and “Come Fly with Me,” crooned out by a name-dropping L.A. County coroner (the dead perfect Thom Sesma). This lyric sent my hand straight to my cheek: “Oh, Natalie Wood / Or Natalie Won’t / Leave a legend / When she leaves that boat.”

The band takes center stage, occupying a large plywood unit on castors and perilously pushing the actors to the fringe. I was initially skeptical of this choice, but Arnulfo Maldonado’s set has more tricks than at first appears and Heather Gilbert’s precise lighting allows for scenes to materialize out of the shadows, a Cromer specialty. Everyone sounds great under the music direction of Rebekah Bruce and the pristine sound design of Kai Harada and Joshua Millican, which remarkably allows every lyric to come through in a percussion-heavy score (drummer Spencer Cohen seems to be having a blast).

The musicians provide a Brechtian frame for the story, with the lead vocalist (an ideally cast Jeb Brown) also acting as narrator. He cedes the mic to several characters over the course of this 90-minute musical and they all rock out. Trent Saunders particularly delivers a star-making performance as Andy Payne, the winner of a cross-country race to promote the new Route 66, during which Elmer served as an attraction. Having different actors step into the front man role is a reminder that we all think we’re the main character. But then we die, and the world keeps turning.

No performer tells that story better than Durand, who spends the entire second act in a box, stiffly staring out at the audience. It is incredibly difficult maintain perfect stillness onstage, and Durand is giving the most impressive physical embodiment of being dead since David Hyde Pierce in A Life. There were times when I thought he had been swapped out with a life-size dummy (Audible has the resources for such a thing, as a prop by Gloria Sun proves all too gruesomely). But then Durand would flick his eyes, making me flinch and laugh simultaneously. Sorry Beetlejuice, but there’s never been a better musical corpse than Elmer.

Most of us can reasonably expect that our rendezvous with capitalist exploitation will end at death, but it’s not true for everyone (Bodies: The Exhibition is currently on display at the Luxor Hotel and Casino). As Payne sagely sings, “Let the mummy offer you some advice / You pick a road and you pay a price / They’ll use you up, they won’t think twice, so kid you better run.” Better than any cross-country race, the creators of Dead Outlaw show us America and invite us to take a big whiff.