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‘Dead Outlaw’ Review: Rambunctious Mummy Musical is Weird But Wildly Entertaining
The new musical from "The Band's Visit" team of David Yazbek, Itamar Moses and director David Cromer is bold, bracing and outrageous.
In 1976, the deteriorating mummy is discovered by a Teamster seeking locations for television’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” and Elmer receives a second autopsy by Thomas Noguchi (Thom Sesma), L.A.’s famed “coroner to the stars,” before this failed outlaw reaches his final dead end. The strong score by the always surprising Yazbek (“The Full Monty,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”) and Erik Della Penna is filled with American song styles that span a century’s worth of musical genres, including bluegrass, pop, folk and rockabilly. Sesma has a forensic showstopper when Noguchi turns into a Vegas showman with a fabulously cheesy and cheeky lounge number, “Up in the Stars.” Trent Saunders is also a standout as Andy Payne, the Cherokee runner who won the first cross-country road race event in 1928 — with Elmer’s corpse a traveling side attraction.
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