Dead Outlaw (c) Matthew Murphy
Broadway: Dead Outlaw
Longacre Theatre
When I heard the premise of the outrageously true story of Dead Outlaw, the new musical by the creative team behind the musical, The Band’s Visit, I was worried that the evening would be mostly about a singing corpse. Thankfully not. In fact, once the dead outlaw, Elmer McCurdy (Andrew Durand), dies in 1911, he mostly stays dead as his body and coffin become an after-death oddity sensation throughout most of the 20th century. Poor Durand stays in the upright coffin for the latter half of the show as Elmer’s mummified corpse (embalmed by arsenic) is the centerpiece of Hollywood movies, travelling circuses and beach boardwalk sideshows. Thankfully Durand has a lot more to do in the first half of the musical, as our narrator, played by Jeb Brown, tries to piece together as much of McCurdy’s life into a cohesive story as he can. Elmer, it seems, was a troubled alcoholic from Maine, who tried to lead an honest life, serving time in the army, finding love with a shopkeeper named Maggie (Julia Knitel) before getting involved with a family of bank and train robbers, ending in Elmer’s death in a shootout. At this point, the morbid part of Elmer’s cross-country journey starts, and it doesn’t end until his body is discovered in an old theater during the filming of a The Six Million Dollar Man TV episode in 1977. Book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer don’t sugarcoat McCurdy’s story, but instead utilize a distancing, Brechtian element to the narrative.
Dead Outlaw (c) Matthew Murphy
Except for Durand, the rest of the talented cast (as well as some of the band) play multiple characters that come into contact with the outlaw, whether dead or alive. The catchy country rock songs by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna give an authentic Americana feel to the story that helps the audience get through some of the queasier parts, including two autopsy scenes. But throughout, Durand is always fascinating to watch, as he plays out Elmer’s more tragic decisions in life, or even as the titular corpse. Other standouts in the cast include Knitel, as most of the women in Elmer’s life, and Thom Sesma as the dry-humored coroner in the 1970s who has the best song in the show, “Up to the Stars.” There’s a lot to admire in Dead Outlaw, which had a healthy run Off-Broadway last season, but what will its fate be on Broadway? Hopefully, like Elmer McCurdy’s story, curiosity will be Dead Outlaw’s biggest draw.
Irishtown (c) Carol Rosegg
Theater: Irishtown
Irish Repertory Theater
You can’t get any more meta than Irishtown, Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s new play at off-Broadway’s Irish Rep. A theater troupe in Ireland is rehearsing a play they are bringing to Broadway when a thought pops into one of the actors’ heads: “Is the play Irish enough?” First of all, the play, Who Are We if We Are not Ourselves at All?, is set in England, and secondly, it has a happy ending (how a play about a sexual assault court case has a happy ending is never explained), which is not very Irish. While Aisling (Brenda Meaney), the playwright, whose last play at the Irishtown Theater, The Happy Leper of Larne, was a big hit, the current drama’s three actors—veteran actress Constance (Kate Burton), newcomer Síofra (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) and pragmatic Quin (Kevin Oliver Lynch)—are worried about the reactions of New York City audiences to the play and their chances for Tony Awards (always in the back of these actors’ minds). Despite the efforts of the director, Poppy (Angela Reed), chaos ensues, and before you can say “three actors in search of an Irish play,” the actors take the control, and they find it’s harder to define what a play from Ireland is.
Irishtown (c) Carol Rosegg
What makes this play extra delicious is the theater presenting the world premiere of Irishtown has been producing its Repertory of these Irish plays for decades now, to enthusiastic acclaim. Whether it’s works from the great Irish cannon by Sean O’Casey, Brian Friel or Samuel Beckett, or modern plays like Disco Pigs and this season’s The Beacon, Irish Rep has played into this notion of the type of plays American audiences have come to expect. While there are some logistical questions in Smyth’s script (Would producers bring an untested new play from Ireland directly to Broadway?), the cast goes all-in with the farcical aspects of the comedy, and it is surely one of the funnier shows in New York that doesn’t have Mary Todd Lincoln as a character. Everyone in the cast has their moments, but to say that the usually dignified Kate Burton steals the show with her funniest, no-holds barred performance would be an understatement. And, yes, Irishtown does have a happy ending, and it does feel odd, but also so right.
Theater Kid (c) Simon & Schuster
Book: Theater Kid by Jeffrey Seller
Simon & Schuster
There are two distinct narrative lines in Jeffrey Seller’s engrossing memoir, Theater Kid. The cover art leans toward the main reason people will pick up the book, and that is to get backstage insight and juicy tea from the theater producer of such modern classics as Rent and Hamilton. But Seller doesn’t get into theater talk until almost halfway through Theater Kid, instead focusing on what defines most memoirs, his life as the kid of his title. This section mostly surrounds his rocky relationship with his father, a Paul Bunyon type, who suffers a brain injury as an adult, which leads to erratic and impulsive behavior that affected his role as father and breadwinner for his family in the early 1970s of suburban Michigan. It was only during Seller’s teen years that theater started to become a refuge to his family life, through camp and after school activities. After graduating from the University of Michigan (where he roomed with future musical composer Andrew Lippa, who would play a very important role in Seller’s life), he makes his way to Manhattan, first in the offices of the producers Barry and Fran Weissler, before starting The Booking Office with his partner Kevin McCollum.
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Hamilton (c) Joan Marcus
It is then that we start to get the Broadway stories, where he learns his biggest lesson: invest in young writers, as Seller did with Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda, which may result in future Pulitzer Prize-winning hits like Rent and Hamilton. Seller treats the development of them (as well as Avenue Q, which he gleefully reminds us beat Wicked for the 2004 Best Musical Tony Award) as mostly a laundry list of major milestones in the creation of these shows, including Larson’s tragic death before the first preview of Rent or the day after the 2016 presidential election, when newly-elected VP Mike Pence requested tickets to see Hamilton. But Seller seems more emotionally invested when discussing two major facets of his life: his homosexuality, especially during the early days of the AIDS crisis, and that he was adopted. These two elements permeate the book’s narrative, adding poignancy and context to the many successes in his professional life. Theater Kid is a badge that many of us involved in plays and musicals in any way wear with pride, and Jeffery Seller’s story is insightful and honest and whose unique journey will be totally relatable to us all. While it is a good read, know there will also be an audiobook with a starry cast (including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Darren Criss) that is sure to be a fun listen as well.
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