Review by Ron Fassler . . .
With the Tony Awards deadline fast upon us, two final shows are slipping in under the wire, Dead Outlaw and Real Women Have Curves, both opening tonight (I’ll have my review for Real Women, a new musical based on the 2002 film, later in the week). For now, it’s my pleasure to report that Dead Outlaw, which opened off-Broadway last year and won the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the New York Drama Critics prize for Best Musical, could very well be on its way to Tony Awards glory at the June 8th ceremony at Radio City Music Hall. Everything that worked downtown in a nearly 400 seat theatre is working just as effectively uptown, now playing to audiences of more than a 1,000. Raucous, audacious, and boisterous, it displays one of the best ensemble casts and onstage musicians of this or any other season. I defy anyone to have a bad time once giving over to the singular humor and weirdness of Dead Outlaw.
Putting a clear point on the musical’s irreverence, composer and lyricist David Yazbek’s mantra seems to be (in his own words), “You’re gonna die! It’s all vapor. Let’s have a f***ing great time.” Some of the lyrics to Dead Outlaw’s opening song drive home his point:
“You’re born with nothing
Your cheeks are apple dumplings.
The air, the water,
There’s something more you wanted.
The milk the sugar,
Inside you there’s a name
But you came with nothin’…
You’ll leave here just the same.
Yazbek, co-writing this one with Erik Della Penna, is a composer who time and again has refused to relegate his work to any one category. With his first Broadway musical The Full Monty (2000), he fashioned a pop-rock score, following with the more Broadway inspired tunes of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005). He then moved to South America for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (2010), the Middle East for his Tony Award winning The Band’s Visit (2017), and then a bona-fide Broadway sound for Tootsie (2019). Now, he’s exploring his love of country-rock and bluegrass where Yazbek couldn’t be more at home. Having seen him front his own band (which he refuses to name) at venues like 54 Below, I can attest how he is truly in his element with this style of music.
For Dead Outlaw, Yazbek has explained how for him “tone always comes first” and that it’s “the big driver.” Here he is superbly aided in that effort by director David Cromer, without peer on the Broadway and off-Broadway scene (his Good Night, and Good Luck is currently breaking every known box office record for a straight play). For Dead Outlaw, delivering that all-important tone is essential when the story is based on the real life of a bad guy who, over a sixty-year period is a mostly neglected and forgotten corpse embalmed in arsenic. Years ago, when Yazbek first heard about it, he was convinced that it had the possibilities for a musical. With a solid and inventive book by Itamar Moses (they shared Tony Awards for their work on The Band’s Visit), Dead Outlaw plays like gangbusters, to quote an old and violent phrase.
The machinations of its plot are convoluted without being confusing, testament to the confidence of its narrative. The show in fact features a narrator, done to a fare-thee-well by Jeb Brown, who employs his gruff voice to the many songs he sings with a tongue-in-cheek authority (he is also wonderful when called upon to play a major supporting role). The leading part of Elmer McCurdy, a real-life minor league outlaw gunned down in 1911 at age thirty-one, is played by Andrew Durand, who is something of a marvel. Not only does he get to transform from a small child to a kick-ass drunk and mean-tempered-no-good-son-of-a-bitch, but he also must do his best imitation of rigor mortis embodying Elmer’s corpse for the show’s entire second half. It’s a performance that goes from the sublime to the ridiculous in a surprisingly moving way.
Every actor, all in multitudes of roles, deserve special mention; from Julia Knitel’s lovely rendition of a woman who once loved Elmer, to Eddie Cooper, Dashiel Eaves, and Ken Marks in an array of finely delineated character parts. Trent Saunders is also a standout as someone caught up during one of the many media circuses which feature Elmer’s corpse. But it is the masterful Thom Sesma who brings it home late in the play with a number that comes out of nowhere to the delight of the crowd. It’s a genuine pleasure to see such a seasoned veteran get a showcase like this in a Broadway musical. There’s precedent to win a Tony on the strength of one song and I do expect Sesma, a longtime favorite among the theatre community, to receive a nomination later in the week.
Production values are all top notch. Arnulfo Maldonado’s rotating scenic design of a dilapidated box car that doubles as some sort of basement music studio is perfect, augmented by dead-on costumes by Sarah Laux and lighting by Heather Gilbert. Major compliments as well to Rebekah Bruce’s music direction, music supervisor Dean Sharenow, and the excellent sound design from Kai Harada.
In line with the offbeat humor in the show and its point on how we all gotta go sometime, Yazbek’s fascination with the subject call to mind an off-quoted remark from Mark Twain: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” In fact, Yazbek’s bio in the Playbill concludes with the line: “Without doubt, Yazbek will someday die and eventually be forgotten.” That may very well be, but for the moment why not relish in the significant joy that he’s still here and coming up with ideas like ones for the marvelous Dead Outlaw.
Dead Outlaw is at the Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street, NYC. For ticket information please visit: https://deadoutlawmusical.com/
Photos credit: Matthew Murphy.
Headline photo: JR Atkins and Jeb Brown, foreground.