I didn’t expect to see two musicals within one year about the disposition of corpses. But, yes, last summer I saw the London hit, Operation Mincemeat and the other day I saw Dead Outlaw. Both shows are based in fact.

Mincemeat is about a misinformation operation run by British intelligence during WWII which involved dressing a corpse (an indigent who died on the streets after ingesting rat poison) as an officer and putting on his person phony plans for the Allied invasion of Europe. The body was dropped where they figured the Germans would be able to get their hands on it. The hope was that the Nazis would believe troops were planning to land in Sardinia rather than Sicily. The Nazis did and deployed the bulk of their troops to Sardinia, which meant British soldiers faced less resistance in Sicily, probably saving thousands of lives.

This story had already served as the bases of two sober movies, but the musical is a jaunty, toe-tapping affair. Only occasionally does the show stop to consider the fact that, aside from being a convenient prop, the body actually once was a human being. The body at the center of Operation Mincemeat is never seen. (I wrote about Mincemeat in a column last year.)

The body in Dead Outlaw is onstage at the Minetta Lane Theater constantly, displayed as a mummy in an open casket standing on end. Before this, we see a fair amount of its pre-corpse career. Elmer McCurdy, as played by Andrew Durand, radiates dumb rock star vitality for the first chunk of the show, making one stupid choice after another, destroying repeated chances at a stable, productive life and repeatedly bungling the various crimes he attempts. He meets his end in a gesture of foolish bravado and is converted into an artifact to be sold and bartered for. The contrast between Durand’s explosive energy in the first chunk and his utter stillness in the second is remarkable.

By definition, this is not a conventionally-structured show in which the central character strives to the end for a defined goal. The action shifts from what McCurdy does to what is done to what is left of him. As in Operation Mincemeat, a body is transformed into something valued more than the life it once contained. Mincemeat’s corpse achieves a kind of posthumous heroism. McCurdy’s corpse is treated with a heedless contempt that echoes the heedlessness with which McCurdy led his life.

The score, co-written by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, is a rousing combination of rock and country-western music. The book by Itamar Moses is ruthlessly efficient, and director David Cromer keeps the show moving like a train barreling down the narrative’s tracks. Durand is surrounded by a strong ensemble of players, most notably Julia Knitel as various women in the story including the unfortunate one who gives her heart to McCurdy. Cromer’s train pauses briefly for her to sing a song that reminds us that, for all of its comedy, the story is also about the loss of a life that had the potential for much better.