Vampire show is best new musical on Broadway…
Theater review
THE LOST BOYS
Two hours and 40 minutes, with one intermission. At the Palace Theatre, 160 W. forty seventh Street.
At long last, a vampire musical that doesn’t suck.
A charming and moody rock show about teenage fangst, “The Lost Boys,” flew open Sunday evening at the Palace Theatre and introduced an end to the decades-old curse unleashed by a string of unlucky aughts Broadway mega-flops: “Dracula,” “Dance of the Vampires” and “Lestat.”
That cheesy trilogy of terror has been the goal of mockery for so long that merely strolling into a new entry in the singin’ undead style is scarier than something Count Orlok does in “Nosferatu.”
Even more horrifying, awful “Lestat” also performed the Palace. Eeeek!
But once the lights dim and a placing opening scene commences — in which a cop is violently killed midair by a group of rocking vamps — it turns into immediately clear that there is nothing right here to ridicule this time. There are loads of unbelievable sights to gasp at, though.
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Directed by comeback child Michael Arden, “The Lost Boys” is a critical and formidable effort of spectacle and heartfelt journey that doesn’t look or behave like any musical I’ve seen before.
Without truly being immersive, the intoxicating Nineteen Eighties arcade environment washes over the viewers sensorily, with a three-level crypt set by Dane Laffrey that makes use of the Palace’s excessive peak to its profitable benefit and lighting by Jen Schriever and Arden that’s so beautiful it must be billed above the title.
And the magical aerial stunts — used for all the pieces from high-flying music solos to vampiric sneak assaults — would make Sandy Duncan inexperienced with envy.
Vampire musical “The Lost Boys” opened at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. Matthew Murphy
This show, in every facet, goes breathtakingly gargantuan. Good. Suffice it to say, “City Center Encores presents ‘The Lost Boys’” wouldn’t go over so nicely.
But on Broadway, bigness has been drastically missed.
Much just like the 1987 film the musical is based on wrestled the undead into the current long before “Twilight” was so a lot as a twinkle, so too does the show, with a e book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch and a rating by the band The Rescues, swap Victorian Era castles and thick European accents for Nineteen Eighties California; Gothic for goth.
A household of three craving a new life strikes into the coastal city of Santa Carla, California, where insurgent youths misbehave on the boardwalk and there’s been a worrying spike in unsolved murders. What oh what might be inflicting them?!
Michael (LJ Benet) strikes to tow and meets David (Ali Louis Bourzgui). Matthew Murphy
Sad, seventeen-year-old Michael (LJ Benet) is wanting for function while geeky 14-year-old Sam (Benjamin Pajak) obsesses over Rob Lowe and buries himself in comedian books. Mom Lucy (Shoshana Bean) wants a job — and a husband.
Michael soon finds himself in with the flawed crowd, a spiky rock band headed by menacing, platinum-blond David (Ali Louis Bourzgui). The group’s late-night gigs must be the rationale they only ever exit after darkish, proper?
Bourzgui, who was good as the title position in “The Who’s Tommy” two years in the past, solidifies himself as one of Broadway’s most attractive new stars. An enchanter, his smooth-talking David is Beelzebub by method of Bowie, ensnaring Michael into his clutches with beckoning eyes and a wealthy baritone.
Kiefer Sutherland, the unique David, didn’t croon a observe in the film, but turning the vamps into guitarists and drummers naturally drops music into this world and eliminates the madness of Dracula breaking out into a energy belt. There’s also an inherent hellfire to punk rock that ups their risk. What’s more anti-establishment than a vampire?
In this telling, the vampires are also rock musicians. Matthew Murphy
The Rescues’ songs have power and perspective, even it there are a few too many. Look, they received’t wind up on any playlists alongside “Gypsy” and “The Sound of Music,” but the tunes contribute a brooding, heavy-eyeliner vibe, at instances channelling Evanescence as a lot as modern musical theater, and they work harmoniously with the design and appearing. The rating, with a haunting main theme, is not undead weight.
The band’s jams are joined by the standard character numbers. A serene one called “Belong to Someone” figures into the show’s stunner of a defining second, when Benet’s Michael lets go of the practice tracks above and sings “for so long I’ve been lost and looking for the light” as he floats weightlessly above the stage. Incredible, actually.
Benet, our in-flight leisure making his Broadway debut, has teen idol appears to be like and a strong, pure and emotional sound.
Benet will get an spectacular ballad called “Belong to Someone.” Matthew Murphy
And belting Bean, whose position is barely above a plot gadget, will get a rousing reclaiming-my-girlhood duet with new boss and potential beau Max (Paul Alexander Nolan) called “Wild.”
As Michael hangs out (upside down on event) with his sinister new buddies and a woman named Star (Maria Wirries) and Lucy flirts with her man, Sam makes an alarming discovery with the help of the Frog Brothers (Miguel Gil and Jennifer Duka): Santa Carla’s crawling with vampires.
As Sam, 15-year-old Pajak, who just 4 years in the past was little Winthrop in “The Music Man,” proves he’s a lot more than a guileless River City little one. He’s a gifted comic and spectacular singer with a command of the stage far past his years. His Act 2 quantity, “Superpower,” is wacky in retrospect, yet candy and shiny in a show with a lot of shadows.
Shoshana Bean performs Lucy, the boys’ mother. Matthew Murphy
The trio’s mission to discover and stop the bloodsuckers is perilous and scrappy with the lil “Indiana Jones” high quality of “The Goonies.” And the way in which the plot’s mysteries unfold onstage is a lot more compelling than in the movie. I saved pondering that this is precisely what strident and disagreeable “Stranger Things: First Shadow” ought to have been.
What a wild yr Arden’s had. He began out by directing the first new musical of the season, “The Queen of Versailles,” which was also one of the worst. Though, there are loads of people in the blame line forward of him for that.
Now, with the ultimate show of the 2025-26 crop, he’s delivered the best.
And that show— I can’t consider I’m writing this — is a vampire musical
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