Theatre in Review: The Lost Boys (Palace Theatre)

	Maria Wirries, L.J. Benet. Photo: Matthew Murphy

I think I can safely say that The Lost Boys is the best vampire musical New York has ever seen. This is the backhanded compliment of the decade, of course, but compared to Dracula, the Musical; Dance of the Vampires; Lestat; and this season's unintentionally hilarious Blood/Love; The Lost Boys looks like true blockbuster material. Whether it truly deserves that status remains another question.

Still, give credit where it is due: David Hornsby and Chris Hoch's book connects the narrative dots far more effectively than its source material, the 1987 screenplay by Janice Fischer, James Jeremias, and Jeffrey Boam. Michael Arden's production delivers a kind of spectacle that had seemingly gone out of style: Dane Laffrey's towering, sinister, multilevel set is augmented by lifts that deliver entire home interiors in a trice. Jen Schriever's lighting (a credit shared with Arden), unrolls an endless series of noirish looks, splashes the stage with zones of saturated color, and fully supports the dazzling flying sequences featuring aerial design by Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland. The first act finale, "Secret Comes Out," in which the title characters take to the air, is a bravura sequence unlike anything else on Broadway right now. Elphaba, take note: These guys really are defying gravity.

But there's a catch: Despite all the good work onstage -- including a couple of extremely strong performances -- The Lost Boys is yet another musical that struggles to sing. The book follows the lines of Joel Schumacher's original film, in which the newly divorced Lucy Emerson pulls up stakes in Phoenix, dragging her sons Michael and Sam, to the California coastal town where she grew up. Ensconced in the creepy residence of their late grandfather, a taxidermist, Michael (the brooding, hunky rebel without a cause) and Sam (a perky gay-in-training, who won't be separated from his Rob Lowe poster) are fish out of water, gasping for affirmation. Then Michael falls for Star, an enigmatic rock singer, and gets taken up by her bandmates, who only come out at night. Soon, Michael is running with a pack of biker vampires, downing bottles of blood, and levitating while his friends urge him to ratify his undead status by making his first kill. It's up to his little brother to marshal his motley colleagues and save Michael by applying a few well-chosen stakes.

In staging and design, The Lost Boys offers a fabulous canvas, but it is an elaborate puppet theatre, populated with flat characters who have little of interest to sing about. The score by the rock band The Rescues confidently channels the hair-band aesthetic of the 1980s, but, like so many other pop artists who have taken a flyer on musical theatre, they write for a certain vibe, not the specific characters. The result is a monochromatic score, heavy on brooding ballads, harping incessantly on the need for family. The attempts at lightening the mood are no better; the two overtly comic numbers, "My Brother is a..." and "Mom's Boyfriend is a..." are jarringly out of place, with Sam being chased around by chorus members in Bela Lugosi drag. These frivolous exercises edge perilously near Dance of the Vampires, with its infamous "Garlic" production number and tasteless gay bloodsucker gags.

The songs' lack of character detail, combined with their insistent preaching, has an unfortunate effect: A trashy, fun summer movie is puffed up with bursts of hot air and transformed into a mopey boy's adventure story filled with homilies about father figures, chosen families, and self-realization. Between the big shock moments, the action drags, and even with considerable special-effects wizardry, certain sequences, especially the perfunctorily staged climactic battle against a houseful of vampires, pale next to the film.

Among the cast, the fast-rising Benjamin Pajak cuts a winning figure as Sam, who, not quite ready to out himself, nevertheless rises to the heroic demands of his desperate situation. First noticed in 2022 as Winthrop in The Music Man, Pajak has grown up in front of audiences, scoring in several roles, including the title role in Oliver! at Encores; here, he takes on his most challenging assignment yet. Given one of the score's best numbers, "Superpower," he confidently commands the stage. Any show with the criminally underrated Shoshana Bean is all right with me, and here she gives Lucy an appealing blend of vulnerability and toughness; her two solos -- "The Good Part," in which she views her messed-up life through the prism of her job at a video rental store, and "Michael," the lament of a mom at her wit's end -- are the closet things to showstoppers found in The Lost Boys.

On the other hand, L.J. Benet struggles to make Michael anything more than a case of acute teen depression, and Maria Wirries can't do much with Star, the vampire groupie, whose motivations are often hard to parse. Ali Louis Bourzgui is getting a lot of attention as David, head of the vampire pack, but, to my mind, he is mostly channeling the spirit of Kiefer Sutherland, who created the role on screen. (The show shies away from suggesting a strong emotional connection between Michael and David, possibly to avoid making their bromance seem too gay.) The always-reliable Paul Alexander Nolan is on hand as Max, the creepy doofus who has designs on Lucy. As the comedy-relief Frog Brothers, a pair of pubescent vampire hunters, Miguel Gil and Jennifer Duka are no better integrated into the musical than were Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander in the film.

In addition to the design elements mentioned above, costume designer Ryan Park and hair and wig designer David Brian Brown capture the story's 80s-era leather-jacketed, festival-of-mullets style; they are particularly good with Sam's eccentric wardrobe. Adam Fisher's sound design is arguably too loud but also remarkably clear and intelligible, especially in the captivating a cappella passages written for the chorus.

Given the exciting staging -- including a hell-for-leather motorcycle ride and the spectacle of Michael and friends dangling from the underside of a railroad bridge -- not to mention Broadway's current accent on alienated youth, The Lost Boys may work as a version of The Outsiders with sharper incisors. But like that show, it is weighed down by its repeatedly iterated message. As David tells Star, "Think how perfect it could be if you both took that last step together. We'd all be a family." As David tells Michael, "They say you can't choose your family, Michael. I say they're wrong." As Max tells Lucy, "Without the strength and integrity of the family, we are all lost." As Michael sings, "Oh, I need a family that's gonna stand up for me/Cause for so long I've been lost and looking for the light." Yep, we get it. --David Barbour