“Turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation.”
That line, delivered deadpan by video store owner Max midway through The Lost Boys Broadway musical, gets one of the biggest laughs of the night. It’s exactly the kind of cheeky, self-aware wink a production needs when it’s tackling a foundational 80s property. And honestly, I was extremely skeptical when this adaptation was first announced. Yet here I am, talking about one of the hottest tickets on Broadway, and a show leading the Tony nominations with 12 nods, including Best Musical.
Like many others, I love the original 1987 film. When I was four years old, my dad had two movies on heavy rental rotation for me: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and The Lost Boys. Those were my movies. And they weren’t just childhood favorites that I eventually grew out of. They’re still way up there for me.
So, no, you don’t mess with Joel Schumacher’s vampire masterpiece lightly.
But what shocked me about this production is that it doesn’t feel like some desperate Broadway cash grab or a sanitized copy of the movie with a few songs thrown in. It feels like a real companion piece. It’s loud, bloody, funny, and much darker and heartfelt than I expected. It understands why people love the original, but it’s also smart enough to know that simply recreating the movie beat for beat would be pointless. If I want the damn movie, I’ll watch the movie.
An adaptation has to justify itself. And writers David Hornsby and Chris Hoch take a pretty big swing right away by changing the Emerson family dynamic.
First off: they killed Grandpa.
In Schumacher’s film, Grandpa is the eccentric, taxidermy-loving comic relief with the final line in. Here, he’s already gone. Lucy, Michael, and Sam aren’t just moving to Santa Carla for a quirky fresh start. They’re moving into a dead relative’s house because they are completely out of options. Before a single vampire even shows up, the family is already carrying grief, isolation, and the feeling that life has backed them into a corner.
But the biggest narrative shift comes from the father they left behind. The movie mostly glosses over the dad, but the musical tackles him head-on in the opening number, “No More Monsters.” He was an abusive drunk. In the 1987 film, Michael is essentially tricked into drinking David’s blood from an ornate bottle. In the musical, driven by the trauma of his father and a desperate need for brotherhood, he actively signs up for it. His fear of becoming a bloodsucker suddenly doubles as something far more personal: the fear of becoming a violent monster like his old man. It’s a smart way to give the story real weight without betraying what made the original so fun. These changes give the characters room to breathe and struggle, pushing the show beyond campy tribute and into something with actual teeth.
Of course, you can have all the emotional depth in the world, but if you don’t nail the visual spectacle of The Lost Boys, you’ve failed. How the hell do you adapt dirt bike cliff runs and vampires dropping off train trestles to a live theater environment?
The answer is Dane Laffrey’s towering, three-story beast of a set.
It’s a killer piece of production design, complete with functioning elevators and industrial scaffolding. The verticality of the stage forces you to constantly look up, which is exactly where the threat is coming from. To pull off the iconic motorcycle race on the beach, they drop a massive lighting rig from the rafters, using aggressive lighting cues and dense fog to simulate the speed, danger, and blinding disorientation of the cinematic sequence.
But the undisputed showstopper is the train bridge drop.
When Michael goes through his initiation, LJ Benet sings “Belong to Someone” while free-falling into this foggy void. It’s one of those moments where the audience locks in. You’re not watching a trick. You’re watching a performer go all in, live, with no safety net feeling to it. That kind of physical commitment goes a long way, especially for horror fans who might not think Broadway can deliver that kind of intensity.
None of this emotional weight or high-flying spectacle works without the right cast to carry it, and the ensemble here is absolutely stacked. Ali Louis Bourzgui steps into Kiefer Sutherland’s iconic boots as David, bringing a dangerous, unpredictable rock-god presence that anchors the coven. Opposite him, LJ Benet brings a raw, vocal angst to Michael, while Broadway veteran Shoshana Bean gives the family’s trauma real gravity as their mother, Lucy. But the absolute scene-stealers are Benjamin Pajak as a quick-witted Sam, and the genius casting twist for the self-appointed vampire hunters, the Frog Brothers. By casting a young woman, Jennifer Duka, as Alan Frog alongside Miguel Gil’s Edgar (while the character hilariously still demands to be treated as one of the “brothers”), the dynamic gets a fresh, clever update. It keeps their hyper-intense, deadpan comic relief entirely intact, making them an absolute riot every time they step on stage.
Even with the heavier material and the big stage mechanics, the show never forgets what movie it’s adapting. The fan service is there, but it doesn’t feel like a checklist.
For example, you can’t do The Lost Boys without the oiled-up sax man. The production knows it, and instead of running from one of the most ridiculous images in 80s cinema, it leans into it. That’s the right call. This story only works if it’s willing to be cool, weird, sexy, and a little ridiculous all at once.
The show also has fun expanding smaller details. Sam’s Rob Lowe poster isn’t just a background gag anymore. It turns into a full number, “Superpower,” leaning into the homoerotic edge that was always there. It’s funny, but it also feels honest to the tone.
And yes, they drop “Death by stereo.”
The biggest gamble here is the music. If you’re expecting a jukebox version of the original soundtrack, that’s not what this is. Aside from the presence of the sax man, the music is entirely new. Instead of doing a straight cover of “Cry Little Sister,” the show weaves pieces of it into the original songs like an Easter egg. You can hear it during some of Michael’s darker moments. It’s subtle, but it’s there, and it keeps that connection to the original without leaning on it too hard
That sounds risky, but the original score by The Rescues works.
The smartest move is turning David and his crew into a literal rock band. That shift changes everything. The music isn’t just there because it’s a musical. It becomes part of their identity and their pull. At times, the show feels less like Broadway and more like a live rock set, with stage dives and energy coming straight off the stage.
It’s not trying to replace the movie and comparing the two like they’re competing misses the point. The movie is the movie. It’s perfect in its own 80s-as-hell way.
The musical works because it has its own point of view. It takes real swings, and even when it gets big and loud, it still feels like it comes from people who understand what made The Lost Boys stick in the first place.
It keeps the blood, the camp, the sexiness, and the fun, while digging a little deeper into the characters than the movie had time to.
If you’re going for the stunts, the humor, or just to see if this concept even works, it does. It’s loud, it’s emotional in the right places, and it proves that almost forty years later, it’s still pretty damn fun to be a vampire.
The post We saw Broadway’s The Lost Boys: the perfect companion piece to the 80s classic appeared first on JoBlo.
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