Step right up folks. There’s a freak show story come to town as a musical no less. The real life misadventures of one Elmer McCurdy has been adapted into the outrageously fun off-Broadway show Dead Outlaw. Both the history of this man born in 1880 and his “life” are hilariously macabre and delightfully bizarre.
Elmer was a low level failure of a criminal. He begins life adopted by his aunt who protected his mother from the shame of an illegitimate baby. He finds that out and alcohol becomes a salve. Departing Maine, he travels through a series of jobs including coal mine worker before descending into incompetent bandit. He winds up shot dead as telegraphed in the title.
Elmer begins his story crooning a country and western ballad around a campfire. A train whistle blows. He then proclaims “all right boys, let’s go rob that fucking train”. Off we go to the wild west. Elmer will become another insignificant dead outlaw in the canon of violent American men fueled by alcohol, racism and bitter anger. (Sound familiar?)
In this case, however, laughter will be incorporated into the mix. Elmer will sing a drunken song about killing while stumbling all over the stage. Andrew Durand (Shucked, Head Over Heels) is great both alive and dead in a performance where he unforgettably spends half the show propped up in a wooden coffin.
As it happens, we are witnessing a musical about a nobody who actually became somebody after death. After being shot, he was embalmed with arsenic as a preservative since he had no next of kin to claim him. Thus begins a series of cadaver adventures including side show attraction. He gets lost to history until a 1970’s crew member from television’s Six Million Dollar Man discovers the body hanging as a mannequin on a California theme park ride. True story.
The writing and directing team from the extraordinary musical The Band’s Visit, along with Erik Della Penna, have taken this tale and run with it. Dozens of characters are portrayed by eight actors. One of many highpoints is the coroner (Thom Sesma) belting out a Frank Sinatra-esque ode to death inconceivably referencing Sharon Tate, amongst others. That we laugh speaks to the effectiveness of this team’s grasp of, shall we say, deadpan humor.
Obviously someone pieced together Elmer’s century long adventure and he is finally buried. At that moment Arnulfo Maldonado’s functional and fascinating set provides one of the show’s biggest guffaws. A western themed band equipped with a wry narrator, a damsel not in distress, various money-obsessed charlatans and an undereducated drifter. Dead Outlaw is one for the history books.
This show is the first musical commissioned in a new series by Audible which will eventually be available for listening. David Cromer’s direction is so good that I would miss the simply effective, creatively freaky display but the tunes will likely carry Elmer’s torch to his next incarnation: musical theater icon. Dead Outlaw is a blast.
Dead Outlaw is running through April 14, 2024 at the Minetta Lane Theatre downtown in Greenwich Village.