Theatre in Review: Dead Outlaw (Longacre Theatre)

	Thom Sesma. Photo: Photo: Matthew Murphy

This has turned out to be the season of immobile leading men: Uptown, at Lincoln Center, Jeremy Jordan, playing the title character of Floyd Collins, spends most of the evening trapped in a mine, pinned down by a rock. In Midtown, Andrew Durand, in the title role of Dead Outlaw, spends half the night in a coffin, his mummified remains being handed across the decades like a pass-around pack. This is not a theatrical trend I foresaw. Or welcome.

I'm not going to relitigate Dead Outlaw, a show that, last season, I didn't much care for, but which was critically acclaimed and, transferring to Broadway this year, has been nominated for seven Tony Awards. It is the bizarre, only-in-America true story of Elmer McCurdy, born in Maine circa 1880, who, thanks to a childhood founded on lies, is doomed to a life of failure and fecklessness. An alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder and a yen for riding the rails, he falls in with bank robbers, winning no friends with his comically inept attempts at safecracking. Hunted down by a posse, he is killed in Oklahoma at the tender age of thirty. When no one claims his body, the local coroner turns it into an income stream, offering rubberneckers a glimpse at a slain notorious criminal. Indeed, Elmer becomes the most picaresque corpse ever, as a parade of hucksters and showmen lay claim to him, using him for various bizarre promotions. You'll have to see Dead Outlaw to discover how the former Elmer is found in a Long Beach, California, dark ride in the mid-1970s.

Itamar Moses' book uses a bandleader/narrator (Jeb Brown, possessor of a bottled-in-bond whiskey voice and a wicked, seen-it-all glint in his eyes) to guide us through Elmer's strange life and even stranger aftermath, casting a darkly humorous slant on American entrepreneurialism and the national appetite for myths and legends. David Yazbek, the most eccentric of Broadway composers, teams up with Erik Della Pinnaon a score that swaps out tones and attitudes -- melancholy folk tunes, hard rock, a ring-a-ding lounge ballad -- with each new number. Following a brief, melancholic opening, the onstage band launches into a percussive, guitar-shredding thesis statement, tallying a roll call of the dead that includes Abraham Lincoln, Jesse James, John Gotti, Balzac, Tupac Shakur, Anne Frank, and Bert Convy. I've been obsessing about that last name. Bert Convy? Why not Allen Ludden or Gene Rayburn? Strange are the ways of our creative artists.

The Broadway incarnation of Dead Outlaw is an improvement: David Cromer's staging is clearer and more concise, the performances are more focused, and the design, especially Kai Harada's sound, has been upgraded. (This is pure speculation, but something tells me that the Longacre is a better acoustic environment than the Minetta Lane Theatre, where the production originated.) Arnulfo Maldonado's bandstand set still travels all over the stage, and Sarah Laux's costumes continue to touch lightly on various time frames. If anything, Heather Gilbert's color compositions are even more attractive; I still don't understand why, in the early scenes, only Elmer's face is fully visible; you can ask David Cromer about that.

Durand, a real pro with true grit, does everything possible to make Elmer compelling, but it's hard to care about a born loser who, for half of the show's running time, is confined to a coffin. His remarkable stillness in the latter scenes is wholly admirable, however. Eddie Cooper is solid as the practical-minded coroner who first puts Elmer on the market, so to speak, and as schlock filmmaker Dwain Esper, who rolls out Elmer's corpse to hawk such deathless epics as Maniac and Narcotic. Julia Knitel is striking as the woman who might have saved Elmer from himself, and as Esper's teenage daughter, who treats his cadaver as her confidante. Ken Marks adds a touch of dignity as the plumber who offers Elmer a chance for a stable existence, and Dashiell Eaves is touching as an even bigger sad sack. Two performers have standout moments: Trent Saunders, as the winner of a coast-to-coast marathon run at which Elmer is a sideshow attraction, and Thom Sesma as coroner-to-the-stars Thomas Noguchi, who, adopting his best Rat Pack manner, boasts about such "clients" as Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, and Sharon Tate. This number, a genuine eleven o'clock showstopper, will probably determine your reaction to Dead Outlaw. If you find it fiendishly clever, this is the show for you. If you find it snarky and bearing a hint of hipster condescension, consider some of the other attractions currently available.

Certainly, the creative team gets points for originality and risk-taking but, despite its many fine aspects, Dead Outlaw is the story of a corpse's progress, asking nothing of the audience in terms of emotional engagement, relying on a derogatory sense of humor that wears out its welcome. It's never a bore, but when Elmer arrives at his final resting place, you may feel oddly relieved. --David Barbour