NEW YORK — There’s no shortage of stakes when it comes to “The Lost Boys” and the vampiric musical’s high-flying Broadway aspirations.
Capitalized for a reported $25 million, the stage adaptation of Joel Schumacher’s 1987 cult classic film — about a family that discovers its California beach town is infested with moody creatures of the night — cost its investors a pretty penny. The show’s first-time writers are pinning their theater reputations on its fate. And a 2025-26 Broadway season thin on fresh musicals sure could use a must-see event.
Lo and behold, “The Lost Boys” meets the moment. From its pitch-perfect prologue to its enigmatic epilogue, this maximalist blockbuster mesmerizes at every turn. A packed-to-the-gills plot, courtesy of librettists David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, makes for a full meal without feeling overstuffed (if just barely). The toe-tapping, head-banging score from the Rescues layers 1980s pastiche into an appealing indie rock aesthetic.
Then there’s the technical wizardry overseen by director Michael Arden. Dane Laffrey’s staggering set — a three-tiered ironworks factory turned vampire lair — transforms as elements rise from the stage, fall from the rafters and slide in from the wings. The lighting, designed by Arden and Jen Schriever, crafts both atmospheric tableaux and stagecraft-masking shadows. As for said stagecraft? Let me describe the best coup de théâtre on Broadway since those “Outsiders” teens first rumbled two years ago.
The moment arrives late in the first act, when Michael Emerson — our forlorn protagonist, played by LJ Benet — falls in with a crew of teen vampires and sips from their blood-soaked chalice (classic mistake). When the vamps take their recruit to a railway bridge and plunge into the fog below, Michael at last follows suit. Yet he doesn’t fall — he floats. As Benet belts “Belong to Someone,” a propulsive plea for acceptance, he drifts in a state of (literally suspended) disbelief. The image entrances. The sound soothes. The performance moves. It’s the kind of visceral thrill only musical theater can deliver.
Not that “The Lost Boys” is all spectacle. By focusing on the Emerson clan — older brother Michael, younger brother Sam (an endearing Benjamin Pajak) and divorced mom Lucy (Shoshana Bean, ever the powerhouse) — Hornsby and Hoch get their fangs out for Reaganite family values. And the characterizations improve upon the movie across the board. Exhibit A: David, the vampire ringleader played by Kiefer Sutherland on-screen, was always a mesmerizing menace. But the musical shrewdly reimagines the character as a goth rocker by way of Billy Idol, and Ali Louis Bourzgui’s seductive performance takes flight before David actually starts soaring.
Considering that “The Lost Boys” arrived on Broadway without an out-of-town tryout, some flaws are to be expected. Yes, a song or two could be trimmed. Your mileage may vary on a second act that blends bloodsucking frights with tongue-in-cheek irreverence. Michael’s conflicted love interest (Maria Wirries) could have used more backstory. Yet the breathtaking scope drowns out such concerns.
“Turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation,” cracks the inscrutable video store proprietor (Paul Alexander Nolan) who romances Bean’s Lucy. Maybe so. But desperation can also lead to the most exhilarating drama. So follow these vamps into the mist and sink your teeth into the best new musical of the season.
The Lost Boys Ongoing at the Palace Theatre in New York. About 2 hours 30 minutes. lostboysmusical.com.
Here’s a roundup of four more productions now on Broadway:
‘Schmigadoon!’
If “The Lost Boys” pushes the musical form forward with its rockin’ score and high-wire ambition, then “Schmigadoon!” is the best kind of throwback. Featuring a book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul, who adapted the first season of the Apple TV series he co-created, this loving send-up (and gentle skewering) of Golden Age musicals keeps the belly laughs and earworms rolling. It’s easy to see why these two shows each landed a season-best 12 Tony nominations Tuesday.
Alex Brightman and Sara Chase play the realist Josh and the romantic Melissa, two New York doctors who embark on a backpacking trip in the Catskills as a last-gasp attempt at saving their relationship. When the couple stumble upon a wholesome River City-esque town, they soon realize they have wandered into a musical fantasyland they can’t escape until they have found true love. The kicker: He hates musicals, and she loves ’em.
The humor — filled with laugh-out-lout quips, sly innuendo and myriad musical deep cuts — is perfectly calibrated for this cast of comic ringers. Ana Gasteyer’s stern moralist, Max Clayton’s beguiling carnival barker and Isabelle McCalla’s spunky schoolmarm all seize the show at times. That said, it’s McKenzie Kurtz’s Betsy — a lustful waitress with a squeaky affectation and a vibrato-coated giggle — who makes the most of Paul’s gags.
Directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, “Schmigadoon!” doesn’t skimp on the song-and-dance set pieces while speeding (perhaps a little too fast) through six episodes of story. Although the show isn’t demonstrably different from its world premiere, staged last year at the Kennedy Center, I reveled in Paul’s world even more this time around. Spending time with new interpretations of these characters allowed the work to better stand alone and not just read like an enjoyable imitation of its on-screen predecessor.
That’s the magic trick Paul has always pulled off: As much as “Schmigadoon!” pays tribute to what came before, there’s still nothing quite like it.
Schmigadoon! Through Sept. 6 at the Nederlander Theatre. About 2 hours 30 minutes. schmigadoonbroadway.com.
‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’
As the 1910s installment in August Wilson’s Century Cycle — a 10-play opus that explores each decade of the 20th-century Black American experience — “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” lingers in slavery’s shadow. Fundamental questions of identity and humanity endure as the denizens of a Pittsburgh boardinghouse seek purpose at the onset of the Great Migration. Magical realism also looms large for characters wrestling with the demons of an all-too-recent past.
Returning to the Barrymore Theatre, where the play made its Broadway debut in 1988, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” still lands like a bruising gut punch in director Debbie Allen’s revival. It speaks to the allure of Wilson’s lyrical language that the above-the-title stars — Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson, ably playing the couple running the home — are merely passengers on a vehicle their co-stars take turns driving.
There’s a reason, after all, that Ruben Santiago-Hudson is celebrated as our foremost Wilson interpreter: His boarder, Bynum, is the picture of enigmatic spirituality. But it’s Joshua Boone’s haunting performance as Herald Loomis — a vagabond on the lookout for his missing wife — that most commands David Gallo’s sprawling set.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Through July 26 at the Barrymore Theatre. About 2 hours 30 minutes. joeturnerbway.com.
‘The Balusters’
“The Balusters,” the razor-sharp satire by David Lindsay-Abaire, starts with the farcical decorum of “The Minutes.” The playwright throws in some “Eureka Day”-esque microaggressions, for good measure. Trenchant observations on contemporary gatekeeping give the play its own flavor. And Lindsay-Abaire keeps it all spinning with one delicious twist after another. The result is the funniest new play on Broadway this season.
Anika Noni Rose plays Kyra, a newcomer to the neighborhood association in a town with historic charm, gossiping residents and (seemingly) minor fires to put out: porch pirates, speeding drivers, etc. But those quandaries merely set up the clash of diverse personalities that Lindsay-Abaire has expertly arranged, from an entertaining fossil (a wonderful Marylouise Burke) and an anti-woke contractor (Ricardo Chavira) to a hypersensitive PETA employee (Kayli Carter) and a gay travel writer (Carl Clemons-Hopkins).
Ruling it all — not with an iron first but a quaint wooden gavel — is Richard Thomas’s Elliot, the longtime board president. Director Kenny Leon gets a superb performance out of the “Waltons” alum, who plays Elliot with such folksy ease that his unrelenting rigidity almost goes unnoticed — for a while, at least. But once that gavel drops? Buckle up and get ready for the ride.
The Balusters Through June 7 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. About 1 hour 40 minutes. manhattantheatreclub.com.
‘Beaches’
And … then there’s “Beaches.” Iris Rainer Dart teamed up with Mike Stoller and the late Thom Thomas to pen this musical adaptation of Dart’s 1985 novel, which inspired the tearjerker 1988 film. Twelve years after premiering at Signature Theatre in Arlington, “Beaches, a New Musical” is making a Broadway pit stop before embarking on a national tour.
Jessica Vosk proves a worthy successor to the Bette Midler mantle as Cee Cee Bloom, the brassy diva who befriends a bashful bookworm (Kelli Barrett). But little else about this decades-spanning tale of female friendship works. Who thought this mélange of flat characters, forgettable songs, disorienting pacing and cheap design could cut it on Broadway? Alas, “Beaches” brings only waves of disappointment.
Beaches Through Sept. 6 at the Majestic Theatre. About 2 hours 30 minutes. beachesthemusical.com.
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