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As Lucy, she is refreshingly droll, hitting the film’s comedic beats with a softer touch that lends itself to her character’s tendency to play the spin doctor.

The subsequent expedition is filled with offbeat personalities who help Hernandez and Stephens construct their myth, before poking the bricks out one by one, in ways both droll and achingly sad.

Pugh, with her droll line readings and smudgy blue eyeliner, plays apathy better than anyone; she’s compelling even with all the passion drained from her body.

“Dead Outlaw” evokes at moments the droll perversity of “Sweeney Todd,” the cold-hearted glee of “Assassins” and the Brechtian skewering of “Road Show” — Sondheim musicals that fly in the face of conventional musical theater wisdom.

The book’s title makes a droll pun for “lair,” a villainous place of danger or death, while his vivid, mostly monochrome abstract photographs of poisoned atmosphere wittily recall fashionable Color Field paintings.