Dead Outlaw is the latest musical from the multi-Tony Award-winning team behind The Band’s Visit. Elmer McCurdy was an ambitious, turn-of-the-20th-century outlaw whose death at the hands of a Western posse ended a life of failed crime and alcoholism and began a brilliant career as a mummified side-show attraction that travelled the USA for decades. By the time this journey ended, his name had been forgotten and his desiccated body was hanging in a house-of-horrors ride at an amusement park in Southern California, spray-painted a day-glo orange. Then one day, a grip for the “Six-Million Dollar Man” TV show jostled what he thought was “just a dummy” and an arm fell off, revealing a human bone and beginning a hunt for the origins of this enigma.
David Yazbek, haunted by this true story for 30 years, told his friend and bandmate Erik Della Penna the story, and as the two of them discussed why this tale of money, ambition, fame, memory and death was so compelling, they started writing songs for a stage-piece based on this odd life and these universal yet somehow very American themes. Realizing they were onto something as unique and challenging as anything they’d heard or written before, they approached Yazbek’s The Band’s Visit collaborators Itamar Moses and David Cromer, who quickly became haunted and charmed by Elmer’s story. You will too.
1h 40m (no intermission)
February 28th, 2024
April 14th, 2024
14+
494 reviews on Show-Score
By: Itamar Moses (book) and David Yazbek (concept)
Songs by: David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna
Director: David Cromer
Producer: Audible Theater
Cast list: Jeb Brown, Eddie Cooper, Andrew Durand, Dashiell Eaves, Julia Knitel, Ken Marks, Trent Saunders, Thom Sesma
Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costumes: Sarah Laux
Lighting: Heather Gilbert
Sound: Kai Harada and Josh Millican
Other info: Movement direction by Ani Taj; music supervision by Dean Sharenow; soundscape composition by Isabella Curry; music direction by Rebekah Bruce; orchestrations by Erik Della Penna, David Yazbek, Dean Sharenow
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