Broadway Reviews Theatre Review by Howard Miller - April 27, 2025 Dead Outlaw. Music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna. Book by Itamar Moses. Conceived by David Yazbek. Directed by David Cromer. Choreography by Ani Taj. Music supervision by Dean Sharenow. Scenic design by Arnulfo Maldonado. Costume design by Sarah Laux. Lighting design by Heather Gilbert Sound design by Kai Harada. Orchestrations and arrangements by Erik Della Penna, Dean Sharenow, and David Yazbek. Music director and additional arrangements by Rebekah Bruce Electronic music design by Bill Jay Stein and Ano Hiro Iida, for Strange Cranium. Hair, wig, and make-up design by J. Jared Janas. Associate directors Ani Taj and Seth Sykes. Associate choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin.
Call it truth in advertising, for Dead Outlaw is a musical about a dead outlaw. And it is a humdinger, based on a real story and brilliantly shaped by the team of David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna (music and lyrics), Itamar Moses (book), and David Cromer (director), and performed by the same top-notch cast that helped the show's first production a year ago at the pocket-size Minetta Lane Theatre walk off with a slew of awards that undoubtedly propelled it to Broadway. "Quirky" doesn't begin to describe the strange-but-true story, based on an idea that has been rattling around in Yazbek's head for three decades. It is the story of Elmer McCurdy, a two-bit fumble-thumbs train robber who was killed in a shoot-out with police in 1911 at the age of 31. While Dead Outlaw does chronicle the history of McCurdy's troubled life, the sui generis narrative on which the show rests has to do with what happened to him post-death, until his actual burial 66 years later. Therein lies his fame, and herein hangs the tale. For whatever might be said about Elmer McCurdy the man (it would not be good), Dead Outlaw comes most to life after he is dead. When no one claims the body, he is mummified, in which condition he would spend the next six decades, an on-again, off-again carnival display or stuffed in a closet and forgotten until a television film crew chances upon him at a location site. Now pause for a moment to consider you are an actor trying out for a title role, and you learn you will be spending half of the show propped up in a coffin, in full sight of the audience and mostly staying stock-still and silent. What in hell are you going to do with that?
The rest of the wonderful cast members play two or more roles each, and they imbue everything with the high spirits that are fed by the catchy, toe-tapping score and clever lyrics, with an overall yee-haw country-western vibe performed by an altogether terrific onstage band, directed by Rebekah Bruce. The score also encompasses some wild hard rock (Durand as a destructive McCurdy in his mean drunk mode) and folk (beautifully sung by Julia Knitel, with a warmth that brings to mind a young Judy Collins). And late in the show, Thom Sesma knocks one out of the ballpark with a name-dropping number about famous dead people he has "met" in his capacity as a coroner. This is one score I definitely would want to listen to on repeat. One of the catchiest songs in this wonderfully eccentric show serves as an overall theme. It is called "Dead." Its purpose is to remind us that we all will get there at some point. How cool, I wonder, would it be to "live on" as an embalmed corpse? Many mummified thumbs up to the entire cast and musicians, to Arnulfo Maldonado's clever rotating set design and Ani Taj's versatile choreography, and especially to the creative team behind the juicy delight that is Dead Outlaw.
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