Theater evaluate
DEAD OUTLAW
One hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission. On the Longacre Theatre, 220 West forty eighth Road.
There’s a nagging similarity between the Twentieth-century prison Elmer McCurdy and “Dead Outlaw,” the eccentric musical about him.
McCurdy was killed in a shoot-out with police after a bungled prepare theft in 1911. After which, in a stomach-churning flip of occasions, his mummified corpse was carted across the nation for many years as an attraction in unsavory touring vacationer museums.
“Dead Outlaw,” which opened Sunday on the Longacre Theatre, has additionally been schlepped a distance — from the cool and intimate Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village to a giant Broadway home uptown.
It, too, has change into a bit stiff within the course of.
I fairly loved the scrappy first incarnation final 12 months, and nonetheless admire the rating by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna that stitches collectively rockabilly, campfire songs, lounge music and folks into an eerie Americana soundscape that’s punchy and unsettling.
And the intelligent conceit of the present from author Itamar Moses — that McCurdy is a principally silent cadaver for half the runtime — is sensible and unhappy; a stinging touch upon the grotesque lengths some (many, actually) will go to make a buck.
However within the Broadway model of “Dead Outlaw,” directed by David Cromer, there may be a number of lifeless air.
Effectively, besides within the glass-shattering opener, a rascally screamer referred to as “Dead” that’s blared by an onstage band in a shoebox that appears like a faculty dropout’s storage. The playfully impolite lyrics rattle off people who find themselves now not alive (the joke is that lots of them really are) and concludes with “and so are you!” Consider the unifying cry as “Ich bin ein Elmer!”
The group’s frontman is actor Jeb Brown, completely forged with a husky radio voice, who turns into the narrator — Mr. Rogers after midnight. At first the impact is like listening to a weird-but-true podcast earlier than mattress. Quickly, although, the “and then this happened”s change into — forgive me — overkill.
Elmer, each when pathetically alive and famously deceased, is performed by Andrew Durand, an easy-to-like actor who audiences will keep in mind because the romantic lead from “Shucked” and “Head Over Heels.” As his resume of curiosities would counsel, he’s Broadway’s go-to man for “odd.”
Durand is adorably awkward as Elmer tries and tries and fails and fails to make it as even a D-Listing bandit.
A violent drunk who hops from city to city, adopting new identities alongside the way in which, Durand’s Elmer softly croons a pretty Ben Folds-y tune referred to as “Normal” and hollers a feverish one referred to as “I Killed A Man in Maine.” Within the rambunctious latter, he hurls objects throughout the stage and makes an attempt to knock down Arnulfo Maldonado’s set.
Within the second half, with sunken eyes and a razor-sharp jaw line — and I imply this as a praise — he performs lifeless very properly. The man hardly ever ever blinks.
The present turns into extra intriguing because the story grows wilder. Its most involving and transferring quantity, in additional methods than one, is named “Millicent’s Song” and is sung by a bit of lady whose dad has acquired Elmer’s physique and is storing it at their home. At first she’s rightly horrified by the sight, however quickly begins sweetly confiding to the lifeless man like a therapist.
Time passes as she grows up, humorous evolves into poignant, and her conversations with the unchanging Elmer mature. Julia Knitel sings sublimely, and the music creatively ticks down the years, somewhat than having the narrator announce when and the place we’re. Once more.
Tright here’s additionally a memorable cruise-ship ditty referred to as “Up to the Stars,” easily carried out by Thom Sesma because the coroner as if he’s Michael Buble is one other darkish delight. It’s one thing out of “Six Feet Under.” You’ll both be tickled by the coroner’s punchlines (“Natalie Wood? Natalie Won’t”) or horrified and offended.
The musical has many diamonds within the tough. They’re simply not polished correctly by Cromer’s staging, which is terribly haphazard and diffuse for a sometimes sure-thing director. Scenes far off to the facet really feel shortly cobbled collectively, though the present premiered greater than a 12 months in the past.
“Outlaw” jogs my memory of the insurgent rock musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” crossed with a bone-dry Coen Brothers movie. There’s room for one thing so subversive on Broadway. However not when the manufacturing’s vitality degree is that of a funeral parlor at 8 a.m.
