Dead Outlaw

Playbill: Dead Outlaw

Grade: Overall C-

Dead Outlaw is one of those shows that makes you wonder: what even counts as a Broadway musical anymore? If I were reviewing it as a barroom folk opera — something you stumble upon at an Oklahoma roadhouse where the house band cooked up a two-act tale over whiskey and amps — it’d be an easy A+. But on Broadway? As a full-fledged musical? It doesn’t quite measure up.

The show starts with the Bandleader, played by Jeb Brown, who immediately sets the tone. He’s got this gravelly, road-worn voice that makes you want to lean in and hear the tale he’s spinning. The band he leads is as central as any character — they're planted on stage for the entire show, serving as both orchestra and chorus, and they give the whole thing a rough-and-ready Southern Americana sound. Think folk rock with a dusting of outlaws and broken dreams. Jeb’s vibe works — he sells it.

The first act walks us through the early life of Elmer McCurdy, our so-called “Dead Outlaw,” played by Andrew Durand. Elmer’s songs are more melodic, almost sweet, and Durand’s voice soothes you right into the early 1900s — until the cracks start to show. Elmer’s a man haunted by his vices, mostly whiskey, and despite marrying Helen (Julia Knitel) and finding a moment of middle-class peace, he spirals back into a life of failed crime. His end is fittingly grim: a shootout with a mob of lawmen at just 31 years old.

Then Act Two veers into the bizarre — which, strangely, is all based on fact. Because no one claims Elmer’s body, the coroner embalms him in arsenic and starts charging admission to see him. From there, we follow his corpse through the wildest post-mortem journey imaginable — from sideshow attraction to Halloween prop on a movie set. The fact that this all actually happened almost defies belief, and yet here we are, watching it unfold, often with Elmer himself lying still in a coffin onstage.

Eddie Cooper, as the Coroner, steals much of the second act. He’s magnetic — big voice, big charm, and he somehow makes the whole embalming-for-profit bit genuinely funny. Other cast members, like Trent Saunders as Andy Payne (a real-life footrace champion who encounters Elmer’s body during a promotional stop), pop in to play multiple characters and mostly handle the job well — though sometimes it feels like musical theater whack-a-mole, with actors zipping between roles just to keep the plot moving.

But the truth is, even with its charm and strangeness, Dead Outlaw feels thin as a Broadway experience. The costumes are flat, the set is essentially nonexistent, and the book rarely pushes past the level of a narrated ballad. It’s not boring exactly — the story is too odd for that — but it also never fully comes to life. It plays more like a quirky set at a music festival than a proper theatrical event.

So, was it unique? Definitely. Entertaining? At times. Worthy of the big Broadway spotlight? Not quite. Dead Outlaw is a folksy, macabre curio — better suited to a barstool than a Broadway stage.