Broadway has finally found a vampire musical with a pulse—and what a deliciously dangerous pulse it is.
The Lost Boys arrives at the Palace Theatre draped in leather, darkness, and seduction, and from its first blood-soaked moments, it makes one thing clear: this is no campy creature feature coasting on nostalgia. It is sleek, sensual, and unapologetically theatrical—a fever dream of teenage hunger, erotic rebellion, and pure Broadway spectacle.
Directed with thrilling confidence by Michael Arden, this stage adaptation of the cult 1987 film does not merely recreate the movie’s beloved mythology. It reinvents it. What was once a beloved pop-horror classic becomes something richer here: a lush, moody rock fantasia about desire, danger, and the irresistible thrill of losing control.
Set in the sun-bleached rot of Santa Carla, California, the story follows a mother and her two sons as they attempt a fresh start in a town where beautiful people prowl after dark and bodies keep turning up drained of blood. Michael, the brooding older son, is quickly drawn into the orbit of David, a platinum-haired predator with a velvet voice and lethal magnetism. Their connection is the show’s beating black heart—part seduction, part spiritual corruption, part erotic dare.
And it works.
The Lost Boys First Look
Ali Louis Bourzgui turns David into a glam-rock devil with bedroom eyes and a voice like sin. He doesn’t simply play the role—he stalks it, prowls through it, devours it. Dangerous and hypnotic, he gives the evening its dark voltage. Opposite him, LJ Benet brings aching vulnerability and star-quality heat to Michael, making his descent into temptation feel both romantic and ruinous. Together, they create the kind of charged chemistry musicals rarely dare to sustain: intimate, predatory, and undeniably sexy.
That erotic current runs through the entire production.
This is a show of bodies in motion—flying, falling, circling, hunting. Arden leans fully into the sensuality of the material, and the result is intoxicating. Desire hangs over every scene like perfume. Even the violence has allure. The vampires do not simply kill; they seduce, tease, and consume. It gives the production a dangerous glamour that feels genuinely adult, and far more exciting because of it.
Visually, the show is a knockout.
Dane Laffrey’s towering set turns the Palace into a neon-drenched gothic playground of steel, shadows, and vertical danger. The stage feels immense, alive, and hungry. Jen Schriever’s lighting drenches the evening in bruised jewel tones and nocturnal seduction, creating images so ravishing they feel almost indecent. Every frame of this production looks designed to make you gasp.
And then there is the flying.
The aerial work is not decorative—it is integral, athletic, and breathtakingly sensual. Bodies hover overhead like predators in heat. Characters float, lunge, and descend through the darkness with astonishing fluidity. It gives the entire production an intoxicating physical freedom, as though gravity itself has surrendered to lust.
The score, written by The Rescues, is steeped in smoky rock melancholy and full of pulse, tension, and atmosphere. These songs do not aim for traditional Broadway polish. They are moodier, sexier, and more dangerous than that. The music slinks rather than soars, seduces rather than shouts, and it suits this world perfectly. The sound is less golden-age musical than midnight confession—brooding, intimate, and charged with menace.
There is wit here, too. Benjamin Pajak is hugely charming as younger brother Sam, bringing comic brightness and warmth to a show otherwise bathed in shadow. His performance gives the evening its necessary spark of sweetness, and Shoshana Bean brings muscular glamour to Lucy, grounding the family drama with emotional force and smoky authority.
What makes The Lost Boys so exhilarating is not simply its scale, though it is gloriously big. It is that the production understands what Broadway too often forgets: spectacle should seduce. This one does. Completely.
Dark, erotic, and wildly entertaining, The Lost Boys is a vampire fantasy with sharp teeth and a wicked smile—lavish, lusty, and very much alive.
My novel, It Started With A Whisper, is available now