Spectacular stagecraft, thrilling young performers with terrific voices, a pulsing score by the indie-rock band the Rescues that has at least one tune I find memorable: “The Lost Boys” is a Broadway musical adaptation of the 1987 hit teenage vampire movie that has little in common with the trio of disappointing vampire musicals that ran briefly on Broadway two decades ago –Dance of the Vampires (56 performances), Dracula the Musical (157) and Lestat (39.) With its reliance on special effects and its appeal as a familiar franchise, it shares much more with a trio of currently running Broadway shows: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” and “The Outsiders.”
“The Lost Boys” is, in other words, a theatrical crowd-pleaser. But it also more or less faithfully follows the movie’s mix of gore, teenage angst, and humor, with an Act II dip into comic book silliness. The creative team lets us know they are aware this might not please every theater aficionado: There is a moment in the show when somebody mentions “Little Shop of Horrors,” and the character named Max, the owner of a video store, says. “I do hope you’re referring to the black and white classic. Turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation.”
As in the movie, the Emerson family moves to the (fictional) California beach town of Santa Carla after the mother’s divorce. Older son Michael (LJ Benet) falls in at the beach with rowdy teenagers, led by David (Ali Louis Bourzgui), who turn out to be vampires
The young woman to whom Michael is attracted, Star (Maria Wirries), is half David’s and, not coincidentally, a half vampire, which is what Michael becomes (a common state of being in vampire cosmology, I’m told, but one with which I was unacquainted.)
Younger son Sam (Benjamin Pajak) falls in at a comic book store with the Frog Brothers (Jennifer Duka and Miguel Gil), who are vampire hunters. Newly single mother Lucy (Shoshana Bean) is baffled by her sons’ behavior, and seeks solace from Max (Paul Alexander Nolan), that video store owner, who turns out to be not at all what he seems.
The musical’s book writers David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, who were not involved in the movie, make some noticeable changes in the story, most for the better, although I do miss the eccentric Grandpa; in the musical he’s died and left them his Santa Carla house, full of taxidermy. Michael and Sam’s father (Ben Crawford) now appears on stage, either in flashback or in Michael’s haunted hallucinations, and we learn that he was violent and abusive. (The first musical number is “No More Monsters”) This helps explain why Michael is drawn to David and the other powerful rebels, who in the musical are both bikers and rock bandmates (In the movie, he’s tricked into becoming a vampire; here he signs up.)
The homoerotic undertones of the movie are expanded, though not by much. There are visual clues in the interaction between Michael and David, and more directly with Sam: Both the movie and the musical show Sam with a beefcake photo of (the 1980s) Rob Lowe on the inside door of his closet (!), but the musical also eventually gives him lyrics in the song “Superpower” that more or less spell it out:
Will this secret identity
End up being the best of me?
Mom smiles but doesn’t get me
Michael can’t protect me
But maybe i can be a hero here
And make it cool to be queer
Maybe that’s my superpower
By the end of the story, Lucy has become much more assertive — or to put it in non-1980s terms, has gained more agency..
Shoshana gets some glass shattering arias. Bourzgui, who set his songs ablaze as the title character in The Who’s Tommy on Broadway two years ago, is even more on fire this time around, in his Billy Idol/Kiefer Sutherland blond mullet. As Star, Maria Willes gets more to do than her movie counterpart, and makes the most of it. But I’m especially partial to LJ Benet, making a captivating Broadway debut. Here is an excerpt of Benet’s swoon-worthy songs, “Belong to Someone” in a video taken of a performance at BroadwayCon earlier this year. Notice how believable his angst:
What’s most remarkable about his performance of this number at the Palace Theater is that he’s singing it while falling all the way from a train bridge to the fog-filled netherworld below
All the mid-air choreography sets this musical apart. (kudos to Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, who are listed in the credits for both aerial choreography and plain-old choreography.) It’s a nod to Peter Pan, which was the original inspiration for “The Lost Boys” (the name of the group of young men in “Neverland” who never grow old) – but Mary Martin never had such a workout as the cast here.
Dane Laffrey’s monumental set sometimes feels like its own show, flexible and full of moving parts, such as working freight elevators, home to suddenly appearing sets (the Emerson’s house, the boardwalk, the vampires’ hangout at an abandoned ironwork) on three different levels, evoking everything from awe-inspiring to outright evil with the aid of Jen Schriever and director Michael Arden’s expressive lighting design.
I’m sure there are several levels in which to consider “The Lost Boys.” I mean, I get that the creative team wants us to see it’s really about family. And I couldn’t disagree with people who find it loud and long, with too many ballads. And yes, the tone is jarring, as was the movie. But in a state of fatigue in the final crunch of the Broadway 2025-2026 season, I was happy something as visually splendid and untaxing was the final show.
The Lost Boys
Palace Theater
Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes including a 15-minute intermission
Tickets: $55 – $270. Digital lottery and general rush: $45 (Broadway Rush and Lottery Policies)
Book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, music and lyrics by The Rescues ( Kyler England, Adrianne “AG” Gonzalez and Gabriel Mann) Based on the film “The Lost Boys,” distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, story by James Jeremias and Janice Roberta Fischer
Directed by Michael Arden
Choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant
Scenic design by Dane Laffrey, costume design by Ryan Park, lighting design by Jen Schriever and Michael Arden, sound design by Adam Fisher, aerial design by Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland, hair & wig design by David Brian Brown, fight direction by Rick Sordelet and Christian Sordelet, dramaturgy by Jenna Clark Embrey, electronic music design by Billy Jay Stein and Hiro Ida for Strange Cranium, music direction by Julie McBride, music coordination by Kimberlee Wertz, production management by Juniper Street Productions.
Cast: Shoshana Bean as ‘Lucy Emerson,’ LJ Benet as ‘Michael Emerson,’ Ali Louis Bourzgui as ‘David,’ Benjamin Pajak as ‘Sam Emerson,’ Maria Wirries as ‘Star,’ Paul Alexander Nolan as ‘Max,’ Jennifer Duka as ‘Alan Frog,’ Miguel Gil as ‘Edgar Frog,’ Brian Flores as ‘Marko,’ Sean Grandillo as ‘Dwayne,’ and Dean Maupin as Ryan Behan, Grace Capeless, Mateus Leite Cardoso, Ben Crawford, Dominic Dorset, Carissa Gaughran, Ashley Jenkins, Liesie Kelly, Cameron Loyal, Pierre Marais, Mason Olshavsky, Hank Santos, Colin Trudell, DeLaney Westfall and Pierce Wheeler
