NEW YORK (AP) — One of Broadway’s more impressive performances this season is by Andrew Durand, who is a kinetic force in the first half of “Dead Outlaw” and absolutely motionless in the second. For some 40 minutes, he’s a corpse, standing in a coffin.
“Some nights I want to scream. Some nights I want to rip my skin off — that pressure that you can’t move starts to get to me. And so there are nights that it is very challenging,” says the actor.
Durand stars in the musical as Elmer McCurdy, a real-life alcoholic drifter-turned-failed bandit who was shot dead in 1911 but whose afterlife proved to be stranger than fiction.
His embalmed body becomes a prized possession for half a century, transported across the country to take part in carnival sideshows, wax museums, Hollywood horror movies, roadside attractions and, finally, a prop at an amusement-park ride in the 1970s.
“You watch him have this successful career as a corpse,” says Durand. “I think it just makes people really think about their own humanity: What’s important while we are alive? What do we do with the time that we have while we’re alive?”
‘My toes are falling asleep’
The musical — conceived by David Yazbek, who wrote the “Dead Outlaw” music and lyrics with Erik Della Penna — reunites Yazbek with book writer Itamar Moses and the director David Cromer, who collaborated so winningly on “The Band’s Visit.”
It’s Durand’s first time as the lead on Broadway, following roles in “Shucked,” “Ink,” Head Over Heels” and “War Horse.” He spent many years with the Kneehigh Theatre Company, a troupe where the ensemble was highlighted.
“My favorite thing about theater is the collaborative nature,” he says. “It’s a big moment for me, and I’m excited about it. But, yes, I’m trying to remain grounded.”
Durand, who hails from Rossville, Georgia, has been with “Dead Outlaw” from the beginning when he was cast in last year’s off-Broadway premiere. That’s a lot of standing and not moving.
“It’s different every night in terms of how easy it is on my body. Some nights I just sail through and I’m like, ‘Oh, I didn’t have to blink once and it was fine.’ And then other nights my toes are falling asleep and there’s tears running down my face.”
While in the first half he’s a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, table-jumping restless soul, he says he sets small goals during his time as a corpse, like waiting for the exact moment when a co-star walks in front of him so he can blink or swallow. He also plays word games in his head.
“I’ll think of a word like ‘pencil.’ And then I’ll try to think of a bunch of other words that start with the letter ‘P.’ And then if I find myself saying ‘pickle,’ then I start to think about foods,” he says. “It’s just like stream-of-consciousness things to keep me distracted from what’s going on.”
He’s no dummy
His nights would be easier if the show just replaced him with a dummy, but Cromer, at the first workshop, approached Durand and nixed that notion.
“He said, ‘Just so you know, if this show happens, I’m not going to make a dummy version of you to put in that coffin. I think it’s very important to have the actual performer in that coffin so that we are constantly reminded of his humanity.’”
Cromer has been amazed at how Durand has created a character of straightforwardness and truthfulness simply from studying a photograph of McCurdy.
“Andrew Durand as a performer is a guy who you give him whatever the prompt is and he goes away and brings you 10 times more than you asked for and has completely created, well-thought-out version of things,” says the director.
“Dead Outlaw” is not Durand’s first time playing a corpse onstage. He portrayed a dead man as a teenager in a community playhouse production of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Years later, he’s just trying to serve his new work.
“I look at it as just another challenge of the performance that I’m trying to give, you know? And so I take it just as seriously as any of the songs I sing.”
Plenty of corpses
Durand finds himself in a Broadway season with plenty of corpses, albeit none as taxing as his own work. There’s “Operation Mincemeat,” about a real World War II mission in which Allied soldiers dressed up a corpse to divert their German foes, and there’s “Floyd Collins,” a musical about a cave explorer who slowly dies underground. Then there are all the dead people at the end of “Othello.”
“I think it’s just an odd coincidence,” says Durand.
One of his nightly rituals is to get on the empty stage at the Longacre Theatre about an hour before the curtain goes up to celebrate living — not death.
“I like to take a little moment of peace and a breath for myself to look out into the empty seats and have a little bit of reverence and respect for what theater is and that in just a half-hour, there’s going to be a thousand people out there who have agreed to buy in on this story that we’re about to tell them.”
