Elmer McCurdy is the man at the center of a lively new musical. And for a sizable portion of the rollicking Broadway production’s 1-hour-and-40-minute runtime, he’s dead as a doornail. The woman in the show — the only woman in the ensemble — is an actor from New Jersey who plays various characters. Among them: a mother, a jilted fiance, a cowboy and a little girl who really needs to vent ... to a dead body. Julia Knitel stars in “Dead Outlaw,” a musical opening Sunday (April 27) at the Longacre Theatre. She plays a total of eight characters in the show. Knitel, 32, who made her Broadway debut at 16, has been a part of the musical since the start, all through its successful off-Broadway run at the Minetta Lane Theatre last year. “What’s completely new about this experience is that I’ve been with the show from the ground up and I’m bringing it to Broadway,” Knitel says. “I was in the very first workshop of this show.” The actor, who grew up in Fair Lawn, also played Carole King in a national tour of “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” “Dead Outlaw” opens on the last possible day to qualify for the 2025 Tony nominations, which will be announced May 1. Itamar Moses wrote the book for the show, which is directed by David Cromer and has music and lyrics from David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna. Moses, Yazbek and Cromer worked on the 10-time Tony-winning musical “The Band’s Visit” (2017) before “Dead Outlaw.” The true tale of the outlaw in question stretches from the 1880s to 1977. Elmer McCurdy’s death in 1911 was only the beginning of a wild journey for his preserved corpse, one that saw the body become a sideshow, a B-movie star and a prop in an amusement park — and that’s not all. Andrew Durand (“Shucked”) plays McCurdy in the musical, which is delightfully offbeat and has shades of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” giving the American legend some fictional flourishes. It’s part playful comedy, part meditation on life and death, but mostly all those things at once. “I think broadly, the show is trying to say ‘live your life,’” Knitel tells NJ Advance Media. “Live it while you can, because you never know what’s gonna happen. It could be short. It could be long. You could be propped up in a coffin and dragged around from sideshows to film sets 70 years after your death.” McCurdy, known for getting into some scrapes — often fueled by alcoholism — tried to make a living as a plumber before repeatedly failing at less aboveboard pursuits like safe-cracking and train robbery. He was 31 years old when he was fatally shot by deputy sheriffs in Oklahoma. No family members claimed his body, sending it on the curious journey that inspired the show. In the process, McCurdy’s legend started to outgrow the facts of his life (and then, plenty of people wanted to claim his body). “What’s cool about this show is it really deals with some very dark and strong and intense themes, but does so with a lot of levity, and does so with a lot of humor, and does so with a lot of sweetness,” Knitel says. “And so we’re talking about death, which is something that we will all experience one day, but we’re not beating you over the head with it. We’re welcoming you into our room where we talk about death and play great music and we’ll also make you laugh.” Elmer McCurdy’s dead ... ‘and so are you’ A jaunty song called “Dead” immediately sets the tone for the production. The satisfying repetition in the chorus will be ringing in your ears long after you leave the theater. “Your mama’s dead,” goes the memorable tune. “Your daddy’s dead. Your brother’s dead, and so are you. Abe Lincoln’s dead. Frank James is dead. Your mama’s dead, and so are you.” The funny, frank refrain repeats throughout the show, pointing to the transitory nature of life. Each performance, the band inserts names of famous figures — living and dead — into the song. “It’s sort of ever-evolving,” Knitel says. When the show was off-Broadway last year, O.J. Simpson’s name had been worked in as one of the living “dead” people. But then Simpson actually died, so they took him out of the lineup. “Too many actually dead people, it loses its shine, I think,” Knitel says. “But especially throughout previews, they’ve been adding and changing the names. I think that’ll continue. I think that’s one of the coolest things to come back and see — what people we’ve chosen today to pronounce deceased.” All of the action in the musical takes place around the band, which is planted on a moving stage within the stage — the musicians are as much the main event as McCurdy. This outlaw was a bit of a rolling stone, starting out in Maine and making his way to the prairie. So it follows that the cozy band setup transports the audience to a place far from Broadway, somewhere that’s rustic country-Midwest, the kind of dive bar or roadhouse where tumbleweeds might roll by outside. Jeb Brown (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”) fronts the band and serves as the show’s narrator, also sharing the spotlight with Durand, Knitel and the ensemble as an actor in the show. “I think one of the things that drew me to this piece from the start is the music and how brilliant and singular it is, and how it’s not your traditional Broadway score,” Knitel says. “It’s got rock, it’s got country, it’s got a little bit of bluegrass and folk, some jazz, and then, of course, a few moments of traditional musical theater.” Even a drunken McCurdy commandeers the band at one point in the show. “Having the band on stage with us, the energy is just so incredible,” she says. “Oftentimes the band is in the pit, and so you’re separated from them, and maybe you can find moments to hang out with them and get to know them, but they’re onstage with us, so they really do feel like part of the cast, and we’re all really close, and we just get to watch them shine in the moments when they have solos, and they get a couple acting moments, which I think is really fun.” Two of Knitel’s most prominent characters are Maggie, McCurdy’s tender frontier love (when he’s still alive), and Millicent, a young girl who finds McCurdy’s body stored in her home (the show reminds us: yes, this actually happened). “Millie” proceeds to use the dead outlaw as her go-to sounding board over the years for everyday issues like bullies and boys. He becomes her reliable corpse therapist — a great listener. “What I think is really special about my role within the show as the only woman is that I bring a lot of the softness, I bring a lot of the warmth into the cold, very humorous death story that we’re telling,” Knitel says. “Most of my female characters are the only ones who ever have real empathy for him, especially Millicent and Maggie ... they care, and in a world that is very uncaring, and in a life that does not have a lot of warmth, those two people get to bring something to Elmer that he doesn’t get, both in his life and in his death. So I think it’s a really nice contrast for the rest of the style of the show.” For its off-Broadway run, “Dead Outlaw” won best musical at the Drama Desk Awards, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards and the Off-Broadway Alliance Awards. The show also won best new off-Broadway musical at the Outer Critics Circle Awards, where Knitel was nominated for outstanding featured performer and Durand won the award for outstanding lead performer in an off-Broadway musical. Born to be on Broadway Knitel made her Broadway debut at 16 in “Bye Bye Birdie." She played a fan club girl. She also had the responsibility of running rehearsals as the show’s dance captain. “I was at the perfect age not to take it too seriously,” Knitel says. In Fair Lawn, where she grew up in her mother’s childhood home, her talent was nurtured by both of her parents, who are music teachers and performers. Knitel got her start in Christine Knitel and Eric Knitel’s non-denominational community theater company, St. Anne Stages, which they founded in the Fair Lawn church’s basement in 1996. She also trained as a dancer, and attended the Paper Mill Playhouse Summer Musical Theater Conservatory in Millburn. In 2009, Knitel won Paper Mill’s Rising Star Award for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” at Fair Lawn High School. She dropped out of school for “Bye Bye Birdie” at the end of her sophomore year. “My first professional audition ever and I booked it,” Knitel says. But as she approached 18, Knitel found herself wanting more training, so she got her GED and began studying acting at Marymount Manhattan College. In 2012, that’s where she met her future husband, PJ Adzima, who currently plays Elder McKinley in Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon.” Knitel left Marymount to join the cast of “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” on Broadway and played Carole King on the show’s U.S. tour. She also toured for years with the musical “Come From Away,” based on the true story of thousands of passengers who were stranded in a town in Newfoundland when planes were grounded after 9/11. In 2018, Knitel married Adzima. She was nominated that year for a Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding lead actress in a musical for her off-Broadway performance as Barbara Katsef in “A Letter to Harvey Milk," a show composed by New Jersey’s Laura I. Kramer. Knitel and Adzima teamed up in 2023 to start Stage Time NYC, a monthly variety show at The Slipper Room on the Lower East Side that features Broadway, burlesque, stand-up and drag performances — “very much in the style of old vaudeville,” Knitel says. “It’s really incredible. It’s drawn some huge names, and we’ve gotten quite the following, and it’s expanding to events and it’s just a really great thing to be a part of.” Playing dead When “Dead Outlaw” first came along, Knitel knew she’d relish the chance to play its various characters. “When they sent the material to me, I remember saying ‘Oh, wow, this just feels like such a good fit. It feels like exactly the tone of role that I want to play,’” she says. “I get to use a lot of different facets of my personality and my skill set, and I get to play this classic ingenue while also being a weird little girl. And so I really get to flex a lot of different muscles, which is so unique and so incredible and such a testament to the people who created this show. “But then to also have them get to know me and change things and pick the keys for me and adjust the tempos and really have this collaborative process with this team full of Tony Award-winning geniuses all across the board, it’s been really dreamy. I do feel like the luckiest girl in New York.” The musical illustrates just how McCurdy got from being shot dead in Oklahoma in 1911 to an amusement park in Long Beach, California in the 1970s ... and a coroner’s office after people realized the body was real and not a prop. But some mystery remains. One of the small miracles of the show is how long Durand is able to stay “dead” in an upright coffin. “It’s amazing,” Knitel says. “He’s so chill about it. I remember saying off-Broadway when we all sort of realized just how long he was gonna have to stand still, I was like ‘I think I would have a panic attack. I don’t know how you’re doing it.’” Durand told her he just relaxes and goes with the flow. “It’s very much his personality to be calm under extraordinary circumstances, so it feels like just the perfect fit for him,” Knitel says. “Dead Outlaw” opens on Broadway Sunday, April 27 at the Longacre Theatre; deadoutlawmusical.com Thank you for reading. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter/X, @amykup.bsky.social on Bluesky and @kupamy on Instagram and Threads.