It’s time to close the coffin on Elmer McCurdy’s Broadway journey. Dead Outlaw will play its final performance at the Longacre Theatre on Sunday, June 29. At the time of closing, the new musical will have played 14 previews and 73 regular performances. 

With music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, a book by Itamar Moses, the show was directed by David Cromer.

Read Theatrely critic Andrew Martini’s review of the Broadway production here. 

“Like Elmer McCurdy, Dead Outlaw is a true outlier — strange, singular, and enduring. It never followed the rules — and that has made it one of the most daring and fulfilling productions we’ve had the privilege to stage. Despite glowing reviews and a loyal following, the commercial momentum just wasn’t fast enough in a crowded season. As the show reminds us, sometimes the most incredible lives are cut short. This may be the end of Dead Outlaw’s time on Broadway, but we believe deeply in its future and the afterlife it so richly deserves. Endless thanks to the creators, cast, crew, co-producers, investors and Audible for bringing it to life. It’s been an honor,” said producers Lia Vollack and Sonia Friedman. 

The Broadway cast of Dead Outlaw includes 2025 Tony Award nominee Andrew Durand as Elmer McCurdy, 2025 Tony Award nominee Jeb Brown as Band Leader/Jarrett, Eddie Cooper as Coroner Johnson, Dashiell Eaves as Louis/Charles Patterson, 2025 Tony Award nominee Julia Knitel as Helen/Maggie, Ken Marks as George, Trent Saunders as Andy Payne, Thom Sesma as Coroner Noguchi, with Emily Fink, Justin Gregory Lopez, Noah Plomgren, Max Sangerman, Scott Stangland, and Graham Stevens as understudies. 

The creative team for Dead Outlaw includes Ani Taj (choreography), Arnulfo Maldonado (scenic design), Sarah Laux (costume design), Heather Gilbert (lighting), Kai Harada (sound design), J. Jared Janas (hair, wig, makeup design), Dean Sharenow (music supervision), Rebekah Bruce (music direction), and David Yazbek, Erik Della Penna, and Dean Sharenow (orchestrations and arrangements). Casting is by The TRC Company/Peter Van Dam, CSA. Cynthia Cahill serves as the Production Stage Manager.

Right off the bat, Prince Faggot breaks the tension. 

Playwright Jordan Tannahill eases us into his fitfully intriguing, mostly frustrating new work by opening with a talking circle. Before the story begins for real, our six performers gather upstage as “themselves” (or some theatrical variant thereof) to unpack the provocative premise that has brought us here to Playwrights Horizons (who co-produce this world premiere with Soho Rep). 

“Leave that real child out of all this shit,” protests Performer 2 (the invaluable K. Todd Freeman), motioning to a photo of Prince George of Wales projected behind them. Yes, that is George as in eldest son of William, and second in line of succession to the British throne; and yes, it is that particular photo, taken when George was four (you might know the one). Freeman/Performer #1 goes on to warn: “You start talking about queer childhood, they’re gonna brand you a groomer.” 

But our chief storyteller, Performer 1 (Mihir Kumar), is undeterred. He coaxes his fellow performers to reflect openly on their own queer childhoods, and on all the thorny questions this photo raises: queer identification, ingrained societal stifling of effeminate traits, and the still prevalent “heterosexual default.”

It’s a stimulating, intellectually rich prelude, one that affirms Tannahill’s intent to engage carefully with the questions raised by his (perhaps a little shitpost-y) title. So the biggest surprise of Prince Faggot is how formulaic the play quickly becomes. Once we shift into an imagining of an adult, openly gay Prince George (John McCrea) publicly debuting his first boyfriend, Faggot retreats into an oddly rote narrative of power, privilege, and royal parlor games. 

George’s new beau is Dev Chatterjee (Kumar again), a smart, savvy fellow Oxbridge student of South Asian descent. Naturally, the couple’s hard-launch prompts vicious waves of harassment and bigotry—no matter that Dev’s upper-class lilt is posher even than George’s. At least William and Kate (Freeman and a tremendous Rachel Crowl) are outwardly supportive, if pragmatically cautious. And while an unseen King Charles might be more old-fashioned, he is not an active problem. 

Tannahill’s ensuing drama too-closely echoes Prince Harry’s rebellious journey in Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III, or even feels–in its weaker moment—like a high falutin spin on Red, White & Royal Blue. In fairness, those two examples do not feature a prince tied up and gagged in a sex dungeon, or obligingly telling his (top) boyfriend, “I like your big dick in my pussy, sir.” Yet as George and Dev’s relationship buckles under the pressure of public scrutiny, the beats still feel mostly familiar. More fatally, McCrea and Kumar never find a lived-in chemistry, even (or especially) when their naked bodies are entwined. The sex is refreshingly explicit, but also feels cold, distant. And Kumar is especially flat, often sucking the life out of the pair’s scenes with toneless line deliveries. 

It doesn’t help that Tannahill’s dialogue is self-consciously academic, casting George and Dev more as representations of oppositional worldviews than fleshed-out human beings. One senses the influence of Angels in America in the pair's intellectual sparring matches—and certainly, as in Kushner’s masterwork, the ideas are potent. But neither love nor longing is palpable underneath the words, and George and Dev ultimately feel like ciphers. 

William and Kate are also thinly drawn, coming across as an average middle-aged couple just doing their best for a high-maintenance gay kid (save for one passing allusion to William’s quiet affairs). And George is implausibly naive about the realities of debuting Dev, as in his surprise at the presence of a communications director, Jacqueline Davies, upon Deb’s first visit to Anmer Hall. (A delightful David Greenspan is pure perfection as Davies, and in multiple other roles.) 

Strict accuracy wouldn’t be important if Faggot were a more hyper-real or absurdist work, less concerned with the current royal family than queer life across a broader canvas of imperialist rule. That’s in there too, for sure. But so long as Tannahill is spending a decent amount of real estate on a familiar Westminster, the false details stick out—whether the royal press shop’s hands-off approach to Dev’s public image, or Dev’s own horror when a news truck shows up outside his parents’ home.  

Faggot is more successful when it sets the real royal family aside. In monologues interspersed through the action, the entirely queer cast take turns speaking as themselves (or again, some version thereof), stepping out of the action to reflect on resistance, liberation and faggotry. Though their thematic tie-ins to the main action are sometimes strained, these soliloquies are involving and deeply moving, most especially N’yomi Allure Stewart’s poignant closing words. Director Shayok Misha Chowdhury feels most at home in these scenes—while he keeps the main action moving smoothly, his staging and David Zinn’s sets feel uninspired. 

By the play’s end, George’s schematic journey finally leads him to an essential choice between palatable queerness and pure faggotry. It’s a salient question. But for a play called Prince Faggot, it feels more like a starting point than a place to leave us.

Prince Faggot is now in performance at Playwrights Horizon in New York City.

Sophie Treadwell’s seminal Expressionist play Machinal is given new life by New York Theatre Company (NYTC) this summer at City Center Stage II. In this production, director Amy Marie Seidel and choreographer Madison Hilligoss have imbued the piece with an almost ceaseless, rhythmic underscoring that haunts the action of this austere play. Hilligoss’ tap-heavy choreography and Brittany Harris’ clever practical sound design evoke the cold machinery of the world that closes in on the Young Woman, the play’s beleaguered protagonist.

Written in 1928, Treadwell writes of a young woman, also known as Helen Jones (played here by Katherine Winter), out of step with the society of her day. She tries to conform to what’s expected of her: she works to provide for her mother (Shelley Mitchell), she marries a man with a lucrative career (Sam Im), and she has a child with him, yet she can’t ignore that roiling intensity within her that longs for freedom. She finds brief solace in the arms of a lover (Soph Metcalf), but she knows that can’t last forever. Eventually, that restless anxiety inside her boils over, culminating in a shocking act of violence.

Hilligoss’ choreography expertly conveys the machinery of the Young Woman’s society at work—whether it be the steady, relentless beat of a busy office or the cacophonous sounds of a city threatening to overwhelm a woman teetering on the edge. It’s not the first time I’ve seen tap dance deployed to ratchet up the tension of a scene, but it’s done well here, if intermittently so, as it disappointingly all but disappears in the second act. 

What’s most effective is how Seidel and Hilligoss have made music, sound, and movement integral to this interpretation of the piece. When the Young Woman’s husband touches her, alarm bells ring out. Conversations happening around her are played as if she’s right there with them, a part of their dialogue. She’s a woman beautifully in touch with the world, which makes her punishment for not conforming to society’s rules all the more devastating. 

The play depicts a society hellbent on punishing women who don’t conform to societal expectations, in which men are rewarded for mediocrity and the law is only there to protect a precious few. That is to say: it’s a society frighteningly like the one we live in today. Seidel has made the intelligent choice of casting a diverse ensemble of cis-, trans-, and non-binary actors. Actors often play across gender, further pulling this prescient play into our modern era. 

Rochelle Mac’s scenic and Colleen Doherty’s lighting design combine to create a sleek, bare, and patently Expressionist environment. 

Treadwell was inspired by the real-life case of Ruth Snyder, who was executed by electric chair for the murder of her husband in 1928, that shocked the nation, yet media frenzy is not at the heart of this stark play. It’s a play concerned with one woman’s attempt to march to the beat of her own drum, rather than the relentless tattoo of society’s machinery.

MACHINAL is at City Center Stage II through July 3rd. Tickets information here.