The Lost Boys
Opening Night: April 26, 2026
Theater: Palace Theatre
Website: www.lostboysmusical.com
Welcome to Santa Carla. Perfect weather. Beautiful beaches. And a charming boardwalk…as long as you ignore all the “missing” posters. When Lucy (two-time Tony Award® nominee Shoshana Bean) and her teenage sons Michael and Sam move to town in desperate need of a fresh start, they soon uncover the darker side of this sunny coastal community.While Lucy tries to piece her family’s life back together, Michael keeps pulling away in search of belonging. As he finds connection with a local rock band and its charismatic leader, his younger brother Sam comes face-to-face with a startling reality: When night falls, Michael’s new friends are even more dangerous than they first appeared.
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April 26, 2026
When the musical version of “The Lost Boys,” written by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, with score and lyrics by the Rescues, nails its combination of goofiness and grandeur… Still, the relationship with the film proves tricky. The anticipatory part of horror, it turns out, transfers nicely to the stage — Arden and his frequent collaborator, the set designer Dane Laffrey, are masters of atmosphere. But translating the thriller aspect is harder, and “The Lost Boys” loses its way as it tries, unwisely, to map itself onto the film’s action-packed second half.
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April 26, 2026
The musical channels the 80s maximalism of the movie in Dane Laffrey’s elaborate, towering sets and Jen Schriever’s gorgeous, cinematic lighting design… Those elements, along with Markus Maurette’s special effects, could be considered worth the price of admission. Where this grand spectacle starts to unravel is in the music. The Rescues’ cliche-ridden lyrics fail to interestingly explore the emotions of the characters while only intermittently moving the plot along. There are a few standouts among a parade of songs I can’t remember.
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April 26, 2026
David Hornsby and Chris Hoch have written a muscular yet cheeky book that pays homage to the film, retains choice comedic moments (“Death by stereo!”), and ditches dated material in exchange for themes of family and identity. Indie rock band the Rescues elevates it all with a solid score (music director Ethan Popp co-orchestrates, and Julie McBride conducts the band), while Markus Maurette’s special effects and a flock of flying rock-‘n’-roll vampires (aerial design by Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland) are primed to wow the most jaded Van Helsing.
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April 26, 2026
The creative team behind The Lost Boys musical, along with a terrific cast, seem to have figured out how, exactly, to adapt the horror genre to the stage, and, yes, it has much to do with advances in stage craft and tech, from the jump-scare-friendly improvements in sound design (the better for those loud thunder-like cracks) to special effects (the aerial stunts that bedeviled Angels in America rehearsals back in the early ’90s seem more than a bit quaint compared to all the soaring these vampires do).
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April 26, 2026
This stunner of a show, based on the Joel Schumacher film, is a solid theatrical transformation, rich in imagination, humor and heart — and with spectacular special effects.
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April 26, 2026
A show this big has so many metrics for evaluation that it’s possible to find ways to hate it and love it, marvel at it and disdain it at the same time. Ultimately, when this kind of scale manages to bring with it both genuine humor and beauty (Arden and Jen Schriever co-designed the lavish, illusion-fueling lights, and damn but they’re firing on all cylinders), I’m pulled toward enjoyment… Did I, whatever the issues of The Lost Boys, also have a pretty great time? Well. Is a vampire a pain in the neck?
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
The Lost Boys is a big and bold production marrying technical enchantment with a talented cast of vocal heavyweights. Even if a few elements of this vampire love story remain a bit undercooked, it’s definitely worth sinking your teeth into.
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April 26, 2026
Director Michael Arden and scenic designer Dane Laffrey, whose past collaborations include Maybe Happy Ending and A Christmas Carol, have again created a world we’ve never seen onstage before: surprising, thrilling, sometimes genuinely unsettling. The good things about The Lost Boys are so good, in fact, that they make its fumbles especially frustrating; there’s a sense of lost opportunity. But to an impressive extent, the show succeeds where earlier vampire-themed musicals—the ironically short-lived Dance of the Vampires, Dracula and Lestat—have merely sucked.
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April 26, 2026
“The Lost Boys” doesn’t know what it wants to be: a shocker, a tear-jerker or a parody. We’re supposed to find the vampire gang frightening, but at one point Arden sends Ronald Reagan, dressed up as Dracula, across the stage.
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April 26, 2026
Directed by comeback kid Michael Arden, “The Lost Boys” is a serious and ambitious effort of spectacle and heartfelt adventure that doesn’t look or behave like any musical I have seen before. Without actually being immersive, the intoxicating 1980s arcade atmosphere washes over the audience sensorily, with a three-level crypt set by Dane Laffrey that uses the Palace’s extreme height to its winning advantage and lighting by Jen Schriever and Arden that’s so gorgeous it should be billed above the title. And the magical aerial stunts — used for everything from high-flying music solos to vampiric sneak attacks — would make Sandy Duncan green with envy. This show, in every aspect, goes breathtakingly gargantuan.
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April 26, 2026
You would think Broadway might have learned its lesson. Instead, here comes “The Lost Boys,” a musical adaptation of the 1987 teen vampire film, now at the Palace Theatre, where “Lestat” opened exactly 20 years ago. If anything, “The Lost Boys” is worse than all of them. It arrives at the tail end of what may be the weakest season for new musicals in decades, and any hope that it might redeem the season quickly disappears.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
This whole affair, which comes replete with a level of special effects comparable only to “Stranger Things” on Broadway, is such a sensory experience overall that it (mostly) covers up the lack of subtlety in the melodramatic book and the lack of formative variety in the score, especially in the first act.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
To its credit, the adaptation pumps lifeblood into the theme of cyclical patriarchal violence…However, David Hornsby and Chris Hoch’s script is unable to flesh out the characters beyond archetypical shells.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
It is frequently fun. It is consistently showy. It offers audiences a glossy, high-voltage night at the theater. But for all its smoke, style and sensory dazzle, the show never quite finds the pulse beneath the polish. There’s no doubt The Lost Boys will entertain. In many ways, it feels too big to fail. So Broadway may finally have that vampire hit. It’s still waiting on a vampire masterpiece, however.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
Unfortunately, the musical is less sure-footed when it comes to tone, with the first act leaning heavily into gothic thrills while the second veers into silly humor that largely falls flat… The performances can’t be faulted, with Benet, making his Broadway debut, displaying impressive charisma and powerful pipes (let’s hope they don’t get blown out with his screlting eight times a week), and Bourzgui magnetic as the blonde, spiky-haired David.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2026
“Turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation.“ That line, uttered by a character in The Lost Boys, earns a good laugh but it’s also a shrewd meta assessment of the current crop of film-to-stage adaptations occupying Broadway theaters these days… The show does not reek of desperation after all. In fact, I think it’s better than the film, even with its flaws. And while none are fatal, there are enough to keep The Lost Boys from achieving that one thing vampires and Broadway musicals desire more than anything else – eternal life.
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