Dead Outlaw – Alive and Kicking Up a Storm on Broadway

Jun 20, 2025 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Two Sues on the Aisle, Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston [Updated June 20]

Dead Outlaw is a musical playing at the Longacre Theatre (with seven Tony Award nominations). This dark comedy will leave you humming the most joyful macabre tunes. It is based on an unbelievable true story set at the turn of the Century, about Elmer McCurry, an American outlaw killed in a shoot-out after robbing a train in Oklahoma in October 1911, but whose body would not be buried until 1977.

Dead Outlaw was written by Itamar Moses, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, traces Elmer’s post-mortem rise from nothing to something. Known as “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up,” his preserved body is moved around the country as an embalmed Outlaw, a sideshow attraction, that made its way to films and before finally ending up on the pier in Long Beach, California.

The Storyline

The production is powerful, the band sits front and center, in a honky-tonk bar, playing fast-moving country and rock music as bandleader (Jeb Brown) provides a running commentary in song-storytelling. It’s about Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand), born in Maine, who, as a child, fantasized about becoming a bank robber. When his father dies (Eddie Cooper), he learns that his birth mother was really his ‘crazy aunt’. Elmer is forced to leave the only family he knew to live with her in isolation.

Elmer begins acting out, drinking, and fighting, with escalating violence. Finally, he boards a train leaving town on the open road looking for “a normal life.” He ends up in Iola, Kansas, with a good job and with a woman (Julia Knitel), his life seems to have worked out. But, he falls into old habits, drinking, which brings out his aggressive, darker side, and after a ruckus display where he reveals his real name and claims to have “Killed a Man in Maine” (which is not believed to be true). He is put in the holding cell, where he meets a bandit who convinces him to join their crew in Oklahoma as an explosives expert, trained by Douglas MacArthur (Ken Marks). They have a string of unsuccessful heists, including robbing the wrong train, which ends with Elmer being shot by a posse at age 31.

The real story begins here, tracing the frequent hand-offs of Elmer’s body, which is treated with arsenic to retard decomposing. For the second half of the show, Durand stands eerily still in a wooden coffin as it is moved around the stage because “there’s something ‘bout a mummy that everybody needs,” and Elmer becomes an attraction, which people get ghoulish pleasure from and pay to see.

Ultimately, he is painted DayGlo red and hung at an amusement park until a crewman on TV’s The Six Million Dollar Man discovers that this ‘prop’ is an actual body. He is sent to the coroner for a second autopsy by L.A. coroner-to-the-stars Dr. Thomas Noguchi (Thom Sesma, who sang his way into our hearts with ‘Up to the Stars’).

Phenomenal Performances

Dead Outlaw makes the most of this talented eight-member cast. Durand remains on stage almost the entire time, a human statue for the second act, as the other performers take on a multitude of roles, telling Elmer’s story. Some call-out moments include Trent Saunders as Andy Payne, a Cherokee man who won the first cross-country road race event in 1928, with Elmer’s corpse acting as a traveling side attraction. Knitel, who plays all the women’s roles, comes to identify Elmer’s body, calling him “The man I was to marry was a man I didn’t know.”

One standout moment comes when Elmer’s body is left in a storage closet in Los Angeles in 1949, the stage goes dark, and the music stops, leaving the audience waiting uncomfortably until 1964, when the corpse is released to a filmmaker for $200. Though the pause in action was approximately 45 seconds, it felt far longer, and clearly conveyed the passage of time.

The show opens and closes with the foot-stomping song “Your mamma’s dead, your daddy’s dead, whole family’s dead, and so are you.” Is it a reminder that we all die? Elmer is afraid of a life where “nobody knows your name” achieves fame in death, as a bandit, and all because his body went unclaimed. A possible parallel to Yizkor, honoring and remembering the dead, through their acts and deeds, while Elmer’s life was short, his reputation will be remembered for a long time. The coroner’s final request is that Elmer’s casket be buried beneath concrete to help the soul rest and to ensure that the body would not be stolen.

Dead Outlaw pokes fun at the American outlaw, our legal system, which would not release an unclaimed body, and most importantly, our fascination with death. This foot-tapping, side-slapping, dark but irreverently funny show is not to be missed.

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Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) to see the play, show, film, book, or exhibit being reviewed.

Dead Outlaw received 5 Challahs

Running Time: I hour 40 minutes – No intermission