Dead Outlaw is sharp-witted and irreverent

In 1976, the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man arrived to shoot at an amusement park in California. A central attraction was the funhouse ride, where screaming thrillseekers hurtled past a red mannequin hanging garishly from a noose.

It was only when a crew member touched the body – and an arm fell off, revealing bone – that they realized the mannequin was, in fact, a corpse. Painted in phosphorus and slathered in wax, it had been suspended, unnoticed, for years.

So began a frenzied investigation into who this mystery cadaver was. An autopsy revealed that the man had died from a bullet wound. His jaw was wired shut; inside his mouth were ticket stubs to a crime museum and a penny dating back to 1924. He had been preserved using arsenic.

The hanging man turned out to be Elmer McCurdy, an alcoholic train robber and drifter who died in a shootout in Oklahoma in 1911 at the age of 31. Over the next 60 or so years, McCurdy’s embalmed body was sold and resold, to be exhibited at carnivals and in museums and movie theaters before it ended up, dusty and forgotten, in the California theme park.

Having Durand transform into a thing so lifeless emphasizes he was once a real, breathing man, not a punchline

McCurdy’s life – and, more importantly, his bizarre posthumous existence – is the subject of a sharp-witted, irreverent musical, Dead Outlaw, now playing on Broadway after an initial run at Minetta Lane. It superbly pokes fun at America’s yearning to lionize gun-toting antiheroes, exposing the gumption (and room for abuse) embedded in our capitalism-at-all-costs mindset. It also asks us to confront that final frontier: death.

US author and playwright Itamar Moses has teamed up with David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, who came up with the music and lyrics to create a story that, weirdly, given its morbid subject matter, feels lithe and alive.

Dead Outlaw begins with Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand) lying on his back, staring at the sky as he sings a pretty country-infused melody, “The Stars Are Bright.” It’s a beautiful, sweet moment – quiet and serene – until he jumps up with a whoop to hold up a train, which outlines Dead Outlaw’s rock and roll roots. Onstage throughout is the band, playing songs ranging from honky-tonk to blues in a haphazardly made box that could be a stage inside someone’s garage.

At first glance, the box seems limiting, but soon set designer Arnulfo Maldonado’s versatility comes to fruition: actors scale a ladder up the side of the box, spin it around with the band inside, or climb onto the roof. It functions as the musical beating heart of the play. Inside, guiding the action, is bandleader and narrator Jeb Brown: he’s rough-hewn, well-worn, twinkly eyed and born to tell a great yarn.

At a compact 100 minutes Dead Outlaw feels lean and hungry, short and pithy – and all the better for it, helped along by the eight-strong cast’s considerable charms. It also takes big risks. Durand is asked, in the first half, to hold our attention as we follow McCurdy’s life: from a young boy to the disgruntled wandering vagrant who ended up bleeding out in a hay bale.

In the second half, he is asked to play dead. Propped up in a coffin, with a rifle in his hands, McCurdy is exhibited (somewhat romantically, it turns out) as “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.” Director David Cromer makes Durand stand for the duration of the second act, stock-still, like one of the frozen street performers in Times Square. Superb lighting by Heather Gilbert emphasizes his shadowy deep-set eyes and gaunt cheeks – both corpse-like – and the only movement Durand displays is when he mummifies, twisting his hands and arms.

The easiest way to depict McCurdy’s corpse would have using been a prop (his red, hanging body is designed by Gloria Sun and is gorgeous in its slimy grotesqueness). But having Durand transform so uncannily into a thing so lifeless and maltreated emphasizes that he was once a real, breathing man, not a punchline or a joke.

It is when McCurdy dies that Dead Outlaw truly comes into its own, charting new territory as an enjoyable romp through the 20th century. Minor characters shine. These include the only woman in the cast, the shape-shifting Julia Knitel, who plays his mourning former girlfriend (and all the other female characters); Eddie Cooper as the coroner who first embalms him; and Trent Saunders as a Cherokee marathon runner.

But it is Thom Sesma as Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner who dissects McCurdy in 1976, who steals the show. During the post-mortem examination, Dr. Noguchi is dry and precise. That is, until he grabs the mic and breaks into song in the Sinatra-styled “Up to the Stars,” rehashing with glee the famous bodies he has performed autopsies on, such as Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate and more.

But, ultimately, we are voyeurs too: ogling McCurdy’s fate, both fascinated and repelled

It’s killingly funny, until it’s not. After all, Monroe overdosed, Wood drowned and Tate was stabbed to death at eight months pregnant. I laughed and then I felt uncomfortable and faintly sheepish in what feels like a deliberate ruse of the script. Dead Outlaw operates with a wink, but death is always close. The fate of McCurdy’s corpse wasn’t so different from the Chapel of Bones in Evora, Portugal, where the remains of 5,000 corpses are stuck, in intricate patterns, onto the walls and ceilings. Or memento mori, the pendants and brooches popular in 17th-century Europe that were decorated with skeletons and skulls and were meant to serve as reminders that our time on earth is temporary. It is no accident that – in keeping with these traditions – the recurring anthem in Dead Outlaw is called “Dead”: “Your mama’s dead, your daddy’s dead… and so are you.”

The musical hints that we can disapprove of the men and women who exploited McCurdy’s body over the years, and applaud Dr. Noguchi who ordered, when McCurdy was finally buried in Oklahoma in 1977, that two feet of concrete be poured over his coffin so he could rest in peace. But, ultimately, we are voyeurs too: ogling his fate, both fascinated and repelled.

And so we come back to a production where the main character spends half of his time as a corpse. Other reviewers have asked: why not have the mummy sing? I feel like that is missing the point. If a corpse sings, it has agency. In death, none of us have agency – however much we’d like to believe otherwise.

Presumably, none of the audience watching on the evening I went will end up hanging in an amusement park when they expire. But every single one of us will die, one day. Therein lies Dead Outlaw’s poetry, buried among all the laughs and ribaldry. And the key to why we, like the people who once paid to see McCurdy’s mummified corpse, can’t look away.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2025 World edition.