Julia Knitel describes tackling triple roles in ‘Dead Outlaw’ and performing ‘a perfect musical theater song’ in the ‘weirdest’ show
“I became completely obsessed with this show as soon as I read the script,” shares Julia Knitel about the new Broadway musical Dead Outlaw. The show centers on the shocking, unbelievably true story of Elmer McCurdy, an amateur robber shot down by a sheriff’s posse in the early 1900s whose mummified corpse floated around under many guises for 60 years.
The performer starred in the off-Broadway production last year at Minetta Lane and felt “so intimidated” at the time at the prospect of working with the “team of geniuses” who turned the folk figure into the main character of a musical, including Tony Award winners David Cromer, Itamar Moses, and David Yazbek. Now that the musical is settling into performances at the Longacre Theatre, the actress feels “more at home” in the piece and with the company and calls the chance to return to it “dreamy.” Knitel recently sat down with Gold Derby to talk about the simultaneously moving and absurdist new musical.
Knitel plays many different characters throughout Dead Outlaw, but she spends most of her time onstage as McCurdy’s mother, Helen, his fiancée, Maggie, and a young girl Millicent, who has a unique connection with the criminal. The decision to have one performer portray all three women is especially resonant and purposeful. The actress says that these roles are in conversation with each another because “many times, they are the only ones with any empathy and any love and any care for” Elmer. She gets to perform songs as both Maggie and Millicent and describes the power of those numbers, saying, “In this cold, harsh world, these soft songs come out and blossom like a little desert flower.”
Although she doesn’t play Helen for long, Knitel says the scenes between Elmer and his mother are pivotal to the arc of the show. She characterizes one conversation between the two characters in particular as “the turning point for him. It’s the match that lights the rest of the story.” In her reading, their dynamic makes Elmer “incapable of love for the rest of time.” The audience sees this shortcoming firsthand through Elmer’s relationship with Maggie. The two share the song “Normal,” which describes the life they hope to build together. “I love that song so much. I really find myself completely living in the moment of that and not ever thinking about what happens next,” reveals the actress.
One of Knitel’s standout moments is Maggie’s song “A Stranger,” in which the character identifies the body of her deceased former fiancé in the morgue. Elmer and Maggie do not share much stage time together except for “Normal,” but the actress nevertheless found the emotion of the number accessible. “I think the beautiful and tragic thing about love is that it doesn’t matter how they treat you, if you love them, you love them,” reflects the actress on why Maggie feels the tenderness that she does for Elmer. Her own rapport with costar Andrew Durand, who plays Elmer in life and death, helps her locate those sentiments, too. “I love Andrew so much, it’s really easy to access. I just walk out there and see his dead body lying on a slab … as soon as the music starts, it just sort of takes me on the ride.”
“A Stranger” also features a novel moment of staging for the show, in which Maggie leaves the morgue setting and steps onto the on-stage bandstand to perform the rest of the song. “That was actually a big conversation during rehearsal, finding the balance of, ‘Is this Maggie? Is this Julia breaking out and stepping up and taking in the audience?,’" recollects Knitel about the moment. She thinks this directorial flourish speaks to the ethos of the musical as a whole, sharing, “We’re going to break the walls, we’re gonna break the conventions, and we’re not going to tell you a typical story, and we’re not going to do it in a typical way.” The actress has also added a meaningful personal touch to the moment, too: “I lock eyes with every single person in the band, almost like permission to step up there.”
Shortly after Maggie’s final scene, Knitel returns with yet another important character in McCurdy’s journey, this time as Millicent, the 10-year-old daughter of a man who purchases McCurdy’s corpse for promotional purposes and kept him in his family home. Despite the lunacy of the situation — which did indeed occur in real life — the actress describes the number as “such a perfect musical theater song.” The number affords Millie a full character arc, one that the performer knows audience members will understand. “She’s so full of life and she’s so universal. In this show that is all about universal themes — life and death and loss and love — she gets to the core that we have in all of us, which is this inner child who is bullied, who is going through it, who has her first crush, and then moving, going off to school, going off to life.” Millie's entrance also lets Knitel show off her "blood curdling" scream to hilarious effect.
The universal themes that Millicent raises come to the foreground in one of the final scenes of the musical. Without revealing exactly how the show concludes for audiences who have not seen it yet, it involves Dead Outlaw’s signature combination of humor and pathos, and it elicits different responses from audiences every performance. “People sometimes laugh so hard and so long and in so many waves that they miss the entire last chorus that we sing,” confesses Knitel.
Knitel hopes that Dead Outlaw affords audiences a chance to ruminate on “life and how short it can be and how the people in your life really matter” once they exit the theater. The musical’s retelling of McCurdy’s story has encouraged her to “think about how I want to live and how I want to be remembered” and what it means to leave “a legacy.” If mystically given the chance, the actress would love to ask the real McCurdy if “he had any regrets,” wondering, “Do you wish it went differently? Or did you love going out in a blaze of fire like that little boy who just wanted to be Jesse James? Was this actually as much as you could have hoped for, or do you wish you stayed in town with Maggie?” Beyond these heady questions, the actress also hopes folks leave the show thinking, “This it the weirdest, coolest, most incredible musical I’ve ever seen!”
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions