To Andrew Durand and Thom Sesma, Dead Outlaw Is an 'Original Little Show With an Oversized Heart'

There was a time when theatre was defined by its story, and not by its spectacle.

Before our era of technical advancement and integration, theatre was all about the connection between human beings. The experience of gathering to hear a story told directly to you, without any unnecessary artifice, is perhaps the most ancient artform our species enjoys.

Somewhere in the bustle of the 21st century, we have lost sight of that. Dead Outlaw, the newest show by the Tony-winning team of Itamar Moses and David Yazbek, plus Erik Della Penna, which began previews at the Longacre Theatre April 12 (opening night is set for April 27), is ready to remind us.

Dead Outlaw harkens back to the experience of sitting around a campfire, listening to a master storyteller pour truths, allegorical and literal, into your mind. It shares significant DNA with the original dramatic traditions of Ancient Greece, as well as America’s outlaw country music movement and the raw storytelling of The Highwaymen: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristoffersen.

Originally produced Off-Broadway by Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre, Dead Outlaw is akin to a modern epic poem, flowing forth uninterrupted. “You should be able to close your eyes and still get this story from what we're doing right on stage,” Andrew Durand details, who stars in the musical as Elmer McCurdy, a failed bandit whose afterlife proved to be stranger than fiction. “I always think of a phrase that [director] David Cromer uses: The humanity of this piece is a thread that you pull, and it slowly unravels throughout the show. It’s this big story, it’s a truly crazy ride, but it’s also a single thread.“

"There's this adage in the theatre 'show, don't tell' and that works in pretty much every single play that we do these days, but not this one," adds Thom Sesma, who plays crooning coroner Thomas Noguchi, one of many colorful characters who surround McCurdy in both his life and afterlife. "Cromer constantly turns that on its head: this is story theatre, in a very real sense. We are really investing in telling, and like Andrew's thread, I think of it like a long run on sentence where everyone's responsible for a phrase, and then we hand it off. That sentence never stops. The story never stops. We just keep telling the story."

Thom Sesma, Andrew Durand, and Dashiell Eaves in *Dead Outlaw* Matthew Murphy

As has been done for millennia, a central storyteller (personified onstage by the endlessly charming Jeb Brown) drives the narrative. Brown and his band of onstage musicians are descended from a traditional Greek chorus, interacting with the events of the narrative with omniscient wisdom. Every song, every scene, is strung together with care to handcraft the story of McCurdy’s life. As such, Dead Outlaw is not a spectacle-driven piece of entertainment: it’s a true tale that needs no distracting embellishments.

Describing Dead Outlaw is a somewhat complicated endeavor. Like many great pieces of art, a brief description of its contents can neither do it justice nor come close to conveying the full experience of the work. An alcoholic highwayman (played by Durand) with little skill and lots of heart embarks on a life of crime, only to die almost immediately in 1911. Then, his mummified body becomes a prized commodity for half a century, transported across the country to take part in various carnival sideshows, wax museums, horror movies, roadside attractions, and eventually, a dark ride boardwalk attraction. Then, a perceptive coroner (played by Sesma) finally identifies him and lays him to rest in 1977. Yes, as Brown regularly reminds the audience, the story is completely true.

On paper, the story doesn’t exactly sing, but neither did A Chorus Line’s protracted audition, West Side Story’s gang warfare, or Cabaret’s depiction of Weimar Germany. The best theatre often must be experienced to be understood.

“It's such a weird musical,” says Sesma. “It's so counterintuitive, the way it is constructed. It unfolds, beat by beat by beat, and all these small things align so, at the end, you’re amazed by how far you’ve gone. It’s kind of like life in that way. You can never predict it.”

Durand, who spends a sizable portion of the show as an immobile corpse, adds that “this show has made me think about how many people become famous after they die. The Van Goghs of the world. We all are trying to make our life mean something, trying to leave something behind that is an essence of us and who we are. Elmer’s was a very tragic run of it, he just couldn't settle and enjoy his life. I think a lot of people go through that, and this show reflects a lot of us, that in our pursuit of trying to leave something behind, we waste this life that we're given. And that's the tragedy of Elmer and of getting to see his body live out this whole journey… I'm watching all these things happen to me, instead of me getting to live them.”

Durand's description may sound melancholic, but Dead Outlaw is far from a dour night at the theatre. Witty, wry, and filled with incredulous moments of laughter, the individuals who surround Elmer are a cornucopia of comedic potential, including Sesma’s Thomas Noguchi, another real-life figure who was known as the “coroner to the stars." His roster of corpses included Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Natalie Wood, William Holden, Janis Joplin, Robert F. Kennedy, and Sharon Tate, to name only a handful. It was Noguchi who determined the final details of their highly scrutinized lives, and it was Noguchi who gave McCurdy back his identity after decades of dehumanization, finally allowing him to settle in peace.

The role has given Sesma, one of Off-Broadway’s best kept secrets, the chance to command Broadway’s center stage. “I don't think I've ever had a director trust me as much as Cromer trusts all of us,” Sesma shares, bowing his head lightly. “He just has so much confidence in what we bring, on a fundamental level. It's scary to have someone like that have that much faith in you, but it is also freeing in a way I am not taking for granted.”

Despite its out-there concept, the new musical was a runaway train when it premiered Off-Broadway in 2024. It was almost immediately impossible to get a ticket to the show once word of mouth caught fire, and that premiere run took in a bevy of awards, including the top prize for musical theatre from the Drama Desk Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Off-Broadway Alliance Awards, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. Durand and Sesma also won acting awards for their performances.

“There is a purity to the storytelling at play here. David Yazbeck heard about Elmer 30 years ago, and every step of the way, he and Erik Della Penna have been manifesting truth. They didn’t set out to write a musical. The theatrical experience grew organically,” Sesma states, cocking his head to the side with a soft smile. “We’re in communion with our audience. Dead Outlaw is not the play, and it's not the audience. Great theatre happens in the middle, in the air between the two. That space between someone speaking a line, and an ear hearing it for the first time. It happens for a brief moment, then it's gone. Just like life itself.”

“This show has reawakened the reason I love doing theatre,” Durand states as Sesma nods his head in firm agreement. “Yazbeck was inspired by this story so much so that it created music within him that he needed to get out, and then he found like-minded artists who were also inspired by it. It's a very organic way of making art in the theatre, as opposed to starting from, ‘Oh, here's this movie that could make a great musical.’”

Indeed, compared to the typical Broadway show in 2025, Dead Outlaw is an outsider: It is an original musical not based on any existing IP, it lacks an above-the-title star to draw attention in the crowded Theatre District, and it isn’t driven by spectacle. It is storytelling simplified down to its essence, with a cast of eight performers, a five-piece onstage band, and minimal sets that are occasionally augmented by an evocative array of props.

“Dead Outlaw feels like it almost exists in opposition to what we think of as the commercial theatre,” Durand shares. “This is a piece of art, plain and simple, and then it got recognition because of the quality of that art.”

An industry veteran, Sesma isn’t thrown off by Dead Outlaw being on Broadway. “I made my Broadway debut in the mid-1980s, in the original company of La Cage Aux Follies.” Sesma leans forward, his hands tensed on the table as if poised to launch himself from his chair.

“Of course, George Hearn was our heralded lead, and he also had a very close relationship with Stephen Sondheim. Sunday in the Park with George was playing a few blocks away, and our composer Jerry Herman and Sondheim had a very tense, complicated relationship. One day, I asked George what he thought about all the fuss, and how different our show was from Sunday. And he said, ‘I think it's great. You have the polar opposite types of musical theatre playing only a few blocks from each other, they're both on Broadway, and they’re turning the boulevard into the entire spectrum of experience.’ At the same time as movie stars like George Clooney and Denzel Washington are commanding tickets at $1,000 a pop, big poppy shows like & Juliet and Moulin Rouge! are playing—and there’s still room for this original little show with an oversized heart.”