DEAD OUTLAW Reviews — Page 5

Oh, and though simple, I loved the set. Beautifully lit, too. The pine box walls of the stage looking like a landscape or knots of wood was really effective and moving without really ever calling much attention to itself. 

I think a big part of its struggle at the box office is that the marketing has been really all over the place and very unclear. They haven’t been able to concisely pitch the show- which, admittedly, the show itself doesn’t make very easy. Their initial launch was rooted in Coney Island sideshow, but their key art is western outlaw imagery, now they’re carting Andrew Durand around the city in the coffin in an attempt to create a viral thing. They’ve been slow to get the music out front and center, they were slow to have inexpensive tickets available in previews (and didn’t do any kind of box office event). It’s just sort of baffling. 

Kad said: "I think a big part of its struggle at the box office is that the marketing has been really all over the place and very unclear. They haven’t been able to concisely pitch the show- which, admittedly,the show itself doesn’t make very easy. Their initial launch was rooted in Coney Island sideshow, but their key art iswestern outlaw imagery, now they’re carting Andrew Durand around the city in the coffin in an attempt to create a viral thing. They’ve been slow to get the music out front and center, they were slow to have inexpensive tickets available in previews (and didn’t do any kind of box office event). It’s just sort of baffling."

I have been watching Dead Outlaw’s Instagram feed too, and it feels both too late and ineffective. As you point out, it’s not the easiest show to market. It is, by definition, a strange hybrid of a musical with two hard-to-pitch elements: an incompetent, unlikable protagonist who dies halfway through the show, and then an all-over-the-place revue. In this season, the idea that a dead person would play a key role in the story isn’t terribly unique.

Even the show’s strength - its music - is tricky, because its very diversity makes it difficult to sum up. ‘Something from Nothing’ probably does that better than any song in the show, but it too doesn’t totally work - and isn’t sung by any of its nominated stars.

One of the reasons I was expecting the musical to lean more into its very American themes is that it would create a more compelling way to tell its dark story. But I’m also not sure that would sell either. My Assassins comp illustrates the problem: Assassins is an admired musical. It was never a hit.

I don’t disagree that the producers made mistakes in marketing the show and in failing to take advantage of the momentum from last year’s off-Broadway run. I am just wondering how much that would have mattered.

Updated On: 6/4/25 at 01:11 PM

The View performance will air tomorrow.

Julia Knitel also performed "A Stranger" for Playbill: 

https://playbill.com/article/video-julia-knitel-performs-a-stranger-from-dead-outlaw-in-the-playbill-studio

Noah Plomgren is making his Elmer debut tonight. 

Fordham2015 said: "Anatomy of a Tony Awards Performance: HowDead OutlawBrought Their Show to the World

https://playbill.com/article/anatomy-of-a-tony-awards-performance-how-dead-outlaw-brought-their-show-to-the-world"

That’s fascinating, and a ridiculous amount of work. This was the first time I realized the band was pre-recorded, which makes me wonder how much of the rest of the telecast was pre-recorded. 

I really enjoyed this, even with some reservations, the primary one being that this really belongs off-Broadway. That's not a comment on the quality of the material, but the format itself, which reminded me of something like Ride the Cyclone or some of Malloy's smaller works. Shagginess can be a benefit to a show in a more intimate venue, but here I found myself wishing for just a little more. A little more structure, a little more spectacle, a little more body.

The score is marvelous. Rich, tuneful, and varied, though I did find myself preferring the more musical-theatre numbers over the rock numbers. The rock numbers weren't bad by any means, but most of the other numbers are so strongly pointed that the rock numbers felt disorganized in comparison. Normal, Blowin' it Up, Millicent's Song, Up to the Stars, and Crimson Thread were all huge stand-outs.

I was also totally blown away by the depth of the acting. These characters feel incredibly lived-in and the actors bring a frankly astonishing amount of personality and history to what are basically a series of bit parts, which helps tremendously to anchor the individual scenes. Those scenes in Maine and Kansas, where he's growing up and then falling in love, felt as unexpectedly rich as any great production of Our Town, and I wish the show as a whole was a little better at leveraging that towards the conclusion.

As others have mentioned, Assassins looms over this show for various reasons, but I weirdly found myself thinking of Robert Ashley's Improvement, which (at least in part) explores the unsettling way life slips by us in a series of arbitrary incidents, only to be obliterated by time. Dead Outlaw mines a similar existential vein in the second half as his increasingly mummified corpse meets a series of characters who extract something from him and then go off and live their lives and die.

That accumulation of time is so affecting, and it makes me wish the two halves were tied together just a little more strongly, because it feels like there's a little extra something hiding in there that could be brought out. The eventful uselessness of McCurdy's life, examined in fine detail, contrasted with the dozen-odd glimpses we get of other lives. The expansive inner life, the lies we tell ourselves, the truths that only we know, all the ways we get lost within our own selves, versus how we perceive others in shorthand, use them for our own needs, discard them when necessary.

The excellent acting and score help to lift a lot of these themes up, but I honestly wish this had been a proper two act show, if just to help develop and emphasize those ideas. It's already split exactly down the middle by McCurdy's death, which makes it feel oddly unwieldy as a one-act. Cynically, I get the sense that part of bringing this to Broadway was to boost its potential life in licensing, because this feels ready-made for regional and college productions, so I'm not terribly surprised that it came to Broadway unenlarged, but I can't help but imagine this show beefed up.

Definitely go see it if you can. Whatever qualms I had, this is a genuine, earnest work of art with a fantastic score and some of the best musical acting I've seen in a long time, and it made me feel something legitimately mystical. I really, really hope this finds its feet in local productions, because it absolutely deserves it.