The unconventional critically-acclaimed musical closed June 29, after a short Broadway run.
"I want to tell you the true story of the Dead Outlaw, Elmer McCurdy."
Dead Outlaw showcases the life and death of American train robber Elmer McCurdy, a man whose story was largely unknown until he became the subject of the musical.
McCurdy, born in 1880, became a drifting alcoholic in trouble with the law after discovering the couple who raised him were not actually his parents, as well as the loss of beloved relatives and plumbing job in a short time period. After spending three years in the United States Army, McCurdy started robbing trains.
Unfortunately, McCurdy was not a highly skilled train robber, and his hijacking attempts did not result in great reward nor a happy ending. After having been caught in connection with his final failed robbery, where he had mistaken a passenger train for a Katy train containing $400, 000, Elmer McCurdy, only 31 years-old, was shot and killed by a sheriff's posse on October 4, 1911.
As McCurdy drifted from town to town using aliases and without family, his body, embalmed and preserved, could not be claimed. The opportunistic undertaker, Joseph L. Johnson, clothed McCurdy's body, placed a rifle in his hand and stood the corpse upright in the funeral home where he charged visitors a nickel to see "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up."
In 1916, two men falsely claiming to be McCurdy's estranged brothers, appeared and said they wished to take the body to San Francisco for burial. Instead, they took McCurdy to Kansas, where the men owned a travelling carnival, and displayed the corpse as an attraction -- "The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive" -- until the carnival was sold in 1922
McCurdy's corpse, which eventually deteriorated and became damaged, continued to be used for others' profit. He would be featured in a Museum of Crime, the Trans-American Footrace, theatre lobbies, films/television and finally in an amusement park, where the crew of The Six Million Dollar Man discovered the corpse while filming in 1976. An autopsy was conducted and the body was revealed to belong to Elmer McCurdy.
Originality on Broadway
In a season full of albeit mostly refreshing revivals of beloved musicals including Gypsy, Sunset Blvd. and Pirates!: The Penzance Musical, and revamped stage adaptations of films and television shows such as Death Becomes Her, Real Women Have Curves and Smash!, mounting a truly original musical on Broadway has seemingly become an oddity these days.
Due to the expense of putting on a Broadway show, many productions that have made it to the Great White Way in the past few years are either based on a successful book or film (Water for Elephants, The Notebook, The Outsiders, Back to the Future), have a recognizable name attached (Idina Menzel in Redwood, Robert Downey Jr. in McNeal, George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck) or are jukebox musicals, meaning musicals created using preexisting songs from an artist or band, (Hell's Kitchen, Jagged Little Pill, Movin' Out, Mamma Mia!) to ensure high ticket sales and steady financial profit.
If you look back at the Tony Award nominees for Best Musical from the past fourteen years, at least one of the nominees was based upon a film, and in the past twenty-four years at least one of the nominees was either a jukebox or film adaptation with six that fall into those categories (Spamalot, Jersey Boys, Billy Elliot, Once, Kinky Boots and Moulin Rouge!) taking home the top prize.
I've now seen about sixty Broadway shows, and almost always the ones that leave me mesmerized exiting the theatre are shows that are truly original. I long to see and support shows that are bold, take creative risks, shed light on important history and its makers, and are crafted with such love that it oozes from the stage. I haven’t found many shows that check all or many of those boxes, but some that have include Operation Mincemeat, Parade, The Connector (off-Broadway), Lempicka, Hamilton, POTUS…, Oh, Mary! (though hilariously not historically accurate) and Dead Outlaw.
Dead Outlaw was unlike any other musical I’ve seen. Starting with the music, infused with what I’ll describe as western-leaning rock, and unconventional use of leading actor (Andrew Durand flawlessly portrays a dead body for the second act entirely onstage and I didn’t catch him blink once), it was not at all your typical Broadway musical and that’s why I absolutely adored it. Elmer McCurdy’s story is so unbelievable and horrific that you actually felt sick for him despite his unethical past. And the depiction of capitalism and opportunism is so strongly relevant in today’s world, how we’re always taking advantage of others, often of the less-fortunate, for our profit in some way.
As someone hoping to embark on a career in theatre, I’m not sure I’m optimistic about the way the industry is leaning: away from the original and unconventional written by and starring new talent, and instead toward the conventional adaptations featuring the who’s who of Hollywood. I hope enough theatregoers like me are passionate enough to support the gems like Dead Outlaw and keep the creativity on Broadway.