Amid Bloodlust and Bombast, ‘The Lost Boys’ Takes a Wrong Turn on Broadway

The most original and compelling new musicals to arrive on Broadway in recent decades — and there haven’t been an awful lot of them, frankly— have been incubated elsewhere. “Spring Awakening,” “Hamilton,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” and “Passing Strange” were developed off-Broadway and in regional theater. “Maybe Happy Ending,” the well deserving winner of last year’s Tony Award for best musical, was first produced in South Korea.“The Lost Boys: A New Musical,” in contrast, is having its world premiere at Broadway’s Palace Theatre, where it just opened with all the fanfare you’d expect from yet another overlong adaptation of a Hollywood film. In this case, that movie — a cheeky horror flick released in 1987, directed by Joel Schumacher, with a cast that included Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, and Dianne Wiest—involved vampires, which poses all manner of merchandising opportunities; there are even ads in the theater’s bathrooms, with digital codes provided for more convenient purchasing.What unfolds onstage over two hours and forty minutes is even more aggressive, not only visually and sonically but in terms of its messaging. Librettists David Hornsby and Chris Hoch and The Rescues, the Los Angeles-based trio of singer/songwriters who wrote the show’s music and lyrics, have basically stayed true to the source material, but they’ve tried to make their “Lost Boys” a bit more of a modern morality tale, with a late twist that will leave you either cheering or rolling your eyes.The story is still set in the fictional seaside town of Santa Carla, California, where single mom Lucy Emerson takes her sons, Michael and Sam, from Arizona to live in her childhood home, now deserted after the death of her father, who was alive and a character in the film. While Lucy finds a new boss and a new love interest in Max, who runs the neighborhood video store, Michael, the older son, finds himself drawn to Star, a young woman who, as presented here, sings with a local band.The other band members, unfortunately, are rather creepy types, led by a guy named David, who with his black, bare-chested garb and shock of yellow hair resembles Billy Idol in the early MTV era. Played by Ali Louis Bourzgui, whose most recent Broadway gig was the title role in a revival of “The Who’s Tommy,” David speaks in low, unctuous tones that suggest a predator trying to lure a little girl into his car with candy.When Mr. Bourzgui’s David sings, however, he becomes very loud, as do the other performers. The Rescues’s songs layer multi-part harmonies, apparently a hallmark of the group’s sound, over a hard rock foundation, and Adam Fisher’s sound design, accompanied here by “electronic music design” by Strange Cranium’s Billy Jay Stein and Hiro Iida, makes the gifted singers here seem overamplified during their solos as well.Shoshana Bean nonetheless proves characteristically warm and accessible as Lucy, a part not dissimilar from her recent one as a teenager’s devoted, concerned mom in “Hell’s Kitchen,” and LJ Benet, the latest Disney Channel alum to find grownup work in the theater district, brings a low-key charisma to Michael. Paul Alexander Nolan does the best he can with the nerdy Max, who we know isn’t as nice as he seems because he admires Barry Goldwater.Sam, who’s very bright and probably gay, and Star are more sympathetically drawn, and ably played by Maria Wirries and Benjamin Pajak, though Mr. Pasak comes across as more cloying than he did a few years ago as little Winthrop Paroo in a starry revival of “The Music Man.”The young actor’s hamminess may owe something to the direction of Michael Arden, who has helmed a number of musicals magnificently, including “Maybe Happy Ending,” but was perhaps stumped by the garishness of this material.Mr. Arden’s collaborating designers have, predictably, delivered plenty of spectacle here, from Dane Laffrey’s splashy, spooky sets to Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland’s aerial tricks, which at various points find actors flying and hanging upside down above the stage.If such gimmicks and a lot of noise, plus a little preaching, add up to a satisfying night at the theater for you, “The Lost Boys” could be just your ticket. For me, it was mostly lost time.

Amid Bloodlust and Bombast, ‘The Lost Boys’ Takes a Wrong Turn on Broadway

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