‘The Lost Boys’ Broadway Review: A Stage Adaptation That Doesn’t Suck!

Broadway‘s Curse of the Vampire Musicals might be taking a stake through the heart right about now. The Lost Boys, the Michael Arden-directed stage adaptation of the 1987 movie about teenage bloodsuckers, opens tonight at the Palace Theatre, and it’s killer fun.

Nightmare memories of Lestat, Dracula the Musical and Dance of the Vampires fade like twilight within minutes of The Lost Boys‘ opening bite, as one of the title creatures swoops down from the rafters to fly off with a hapless security guard attempting to roust those meddlesome kids from an abandoned steelworks factory.

Like Stranger Things: The First Shadow playing a midtown-block away, the creative team behind The Lost Boys musical, along with a terrific cast, seem to have figured out how, exactly, to adapt the horror genre to the stage, and, yes, it has much to do with advances in stage craft and tech, from the jump-scare-friendly improvements in sound design (the better for those loud thunder-like cracks) to special effects (the aerial stunts that bedeviled Angels in America rehearsals back in the early ’90s seem more than a bit quaint compared to all the soaring these vampires do).

But there also seems to be a certain fearlessness going on, or at least a lack of inhibition (maybe a lack of embarrassment even?) in live-action genre storytelling. The Lost Boys, like First Shadow and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, goes for broke in embracing the admittedly loonier side of their chiller-thriller adventures. Carrie The Musical they are not.

The Lost Boys even has one up in the gumption category over First Shadow and Cursed Child: Music. The prospect of a chorus full of undead breaking out in song certainly runs the risk of cringy absurdity, but The Lost Boys sails over those traps: The driving score by L.A. indie band The Rescues (Kyler England, AG, Gabriel Mann) puts one in mind of the rock-based sounds of Dead Outlaw, sometimes even Stereophonic. Not bad company at all. (There’s a rambunctious dash of the wildly popular The Outsiders here, too, for those keeping count).

It helps, of course, to have a cast as loaded with fine singers as this production has. Shoshana Bean, Tommy‘s Ali Louis Bourzgui, The Music Man‘s Benjamin Pajak and Broadway newcomer LJ Benet deliver the vocal goods even when the two and a half-hour run time shows some padding. (But what to cut? A love story plot that does, in fact, provide some essential character motivation? The backstory flashbacks about an abusive father that suggest not all monsters have fangs? I’d opt to keep both.)

Benet, the production’s big find, plays Michael Emerson, a teenage rebel who moves with his now-single mom Lucy (Bean) and persnickety kid brother Sam (Pajak) from a bad domestic situation in Arizona to a newly inherited cottage in the California beach town of San Carla. The year is 1987, and the moody (to say the least) Michael soon finds his tribe – the punk-slash-heavy metal teens who hang out down by the pier arcade. They play in a rock band too, providing one of this production’s neatest tricks: At points, the floor of a section of the stage closest to the audience drops down to suggest a mosh pit, while the Lost Boys’ band rises up, a sort of show-within-the-show. It works.

As loner Michael is drawn into this underworld of brotherly camaraderie and sexual attraction (he’s smitten with the semi-Lost girl Star, appealingly played by Maria Wirries, but director Arden doesn’t shy away from undertones of Anne Rice-style pansexuality among the vamps), he gets bitten, literally, by this intriguing new world.

Younger bro Sam, meanwhile, finds his own niche: Browsing the local comic book shop, he meets two fellow nerds who call themselves the Frog Brothers (Miguel Gil, Jennifer Duka) even though one’s a sister which seems to confuse everyone but them. When these self-styled vampire-hunters (they dress sorta like Ninja Turtles) explain the lay of the land to their new pal Sam, the trio soon realizes that Michael is becoming one of the undead, and so set out to find and stake the head vampire so as to save Michael from fully transitioning (ignore that buzzword – there’s no suggestion of any double meaning).

Mom Lucy, meanwhile, has landed a new job at the arcade’s video store and is dating her ever-helpful boss Max (Paul Alexander Nolan).

So that’s the set-up, and it allows the musical to swing between spotlighted solos to big group numbers – the show’s most arresting choreography is of the aerial sort, and one number in particular is a stunner, with all of the Lost Boys, Michael now included, soaring and spinning and flipping high above the stage in a ballet that’s as lovely as it is thrilling. The massive performance space of Broadway’s beautifully renovated Palace Theatre is shown to much better effect than with recent inhabitants Glengarry Glen Ross (too intimate), Tammy Faye (too bad) and Beetlejuice (too land bound).

With a cast of strong singers, Lost Boys gives each of the principals several chances to shine, and while that can make for some repetition, it also showcases the collected talent. Benet kicks things off with the intense “Lose Yourself” – the show’s I Want song – and Bean gets one of the Rescue’s tuneful power ballads in “Wild,” a middle-aged longing for the exciting days of youth. Pajak, whose overtly comic style early on can seem a tad out of step with the other performances, finds his pay-off in “Superpower,” a second-act showstopper, complete with in which his Sam comes to terms with what’s only been hinted at before (mostly via a vintage-Rob Lowe beefcake poster in his bedroom). “But maybe I can be a hero here,” he sings, “and make it cool to be queer. Maybe that’s my superpower.”

And then there’s Bourzgui, whose vampire gang leader David is fashioned as something between the film’s Kiefer Sutherland and classic Billy Idol (Ryan Park’s costume design, along with the hair and wig stylings of David Brian Brown, are on point throughout). As the title character in The Who’s Tommy several seasons back, Bourzgui seemed, oddly enough, both underused and overwhelmed, but with The Lost Boys he becomes a star, his deep, mellifluous voice gliding from purr to growl to rock-and-roll shriek and sounding quite unlike anyone else currently on a Broadway stage. He slinks as cat-like as anyone over at the Jellicle Ball, and pounces with lusty gusto. It’s no overstatement to say The Lost Boys just wouldn’t work without him.

Also no overstatement to note that the show’s producers – including actor Patrick Wilson and Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures – have spent lavishly on this reportedly $25 million show. Dane Laffrey, a frequent collaborator of director Arden, has designed a spectacular set of many moving parts, including a bedroom that descends from above when needed, a rock stage that comes from the other direction and enough catwalk-style perches to give the whole shebang an advent calendar feel with the assorted bat people stationed in every dark nook and cranny. Arden and Jen Schriever add a lighting design that pairs perfectly with Adam Fisher’s sound design to nail the jump scares.

Markus Maurette, Broadway’s current go-to guy for special effects (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Stranger Things: The First Shadow) comes through again with explosions, flashes of fire and a goodly amount of blood-letting.

The show’s book by David Hornsby (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Chris Hoch has an easy, contemporary feel that doesn’t go overboard on the ’80s nostalgia (although that’s here too for anyone who gets the passing reference to “Sunglasses at Night” and remembers that buff, oiled-up, ponytailed sax player from the Tina Turner videos and Lost Boys movie). The writers did some tightening by eliminating one significant character – the not-so-clueless grandfather played in the film by Barnard Hughes – whose absence requires the movie’s fondly remembered final words to go to another character, a switch that undercuts the joke more than a bit. Perhaps that’s why Arden and the book writers have added a brief post-curtain kicker that’s worth hanging around for, a nice little narrative bite in a musical that has no shortage of them.

Title: The Lost Boys
Venue: Broadway’s Palace Theatre
Director: Michael Arden
Book: David Hornsby & Chris Hoch (Based on the Warner Bros film The Lost Boys, Original Story by Janice Fischer & James Jeremias)
Music & Lyrics: The Rescues
Cast: LJ Benet, Shoshana Bean, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Benjamin Pajak, Maria Wirries, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jennifer Duka, Miguel Gil, Brian Flores, Sean Grandillo, Dean Maupin.
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)