Who was Elmer McCurdy? Despite having been present at his funeral, I'm not entirely sure. I know little other than that he was possibly the world's most ineffectual prospector, plumber and outlaw, and that he died with his cowboy boots on. But death was where Elmer's adventures really began. Pumped full of a mixture of arsenic and formaldehyde, his embalmed corpse was dragged around the US freak show and carnival circuit, until it was eventually rediscovered in the props store on the set of The Six Million Dollar Man.
This bizarre offering, devised by members of the Northern Stage Ensemble, is a weird western tale of the good, the bad and the mummy, inspired by Richard Bagsall's book The Career of Elmer McCurdy. John Cobb's production cultivates an aura of absurdity but carries a strange ring of truth. It may be a satire on our longing for sensation and obsession with the macabre, or it may just be an excuse for sight gags involving wagon trains and tumbleweed.
Jane Heather's design transforms the Playhouse studio into a dusty corral, where we have gathered under sun-bleached canvas for Elmer's memorial service as his much-abused body is finally laid to earth. The ensemble then romps through the highlights of his eventful career, from Idaho plumber to Hollywood extra, by means of some nifty line-dancing sequences and an authentically maudlin bluegrass soundtrack composed by Jim Kitson. At times you wonder if you are watching the lost spaghetti western that Samuel Beckett wrote with Johnny Cash.
Peter Peverley excels in the title role as a man who first switches his monkey wrench for a revolver and then becomes a singing cadaver on roller skates. Kitson, Joanna Holden and Mark Lloyd don dusty ponchos to play several hundred other parts with irrepressible gusto.
You could argue that two hours is rather too much of a good thing, and that the style is so hyperactive that narrative clarity is sacrificed. But the Northern Stage Ensemble has created an unflaggingly inventive and preposterously anarchic demonstration of how the west was fun.
· Until October 19. Box office: 0191-230 5151.
