It’s not great news for your new vampire musical when a half-century-old vampire musical comes off a lot wilder.
One of the delights of Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show” is how he brought vampires out of the closet. Even Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” written in 1897, possesses a strong same-sex subtext with its title character’s attraction to Jonathan Harker. Those three female vampires residing in Dracula’s castle are nothing more than the count’s cover.
Frank-N-Furter abandons any pretext of being straight. He creates a husband, Rocky, not a bride, and Frank only seduces Janet to get to Brad.
Which brings us, finally, to “The Lost Boys,” the new vampire musical that opened Sunday at the Palace Theatre. Its timing is not great. Only a few days ago, a fun new revival of “The Rocky Horror Show” opened on Broadway. The new Undead musical actually features two lead vampires. If you haven’t seen the musical’s source material, the 1987 movie of the same title, this review will respect your ignorance and not give away the story’s big secret.
In the “Lost Boys” stage musical, we know David (Ali Louis Bourzgui) is a major screaming bloodsucker from the get-go because he looks just like Kiefer Sutherland from the movie, right down to the bleach-blond hair. Even though David leads a rock band with three other male vampires — they all sleep together in an abandoned man-cave factory — book writers David Hornsby and Chris Hoch give David a beard. We know Star (Maria Wirries) is a beard because David (the vampire, not the book writer) pushes her into having an affair with the hot new boy toy in town, Michael (LJ Benet).
Michael has arrived in town with his mother, Lucy (Shoshana Bean), and young brother, Sam (Benjamin Pajak), after having been terrorized by an abusive husband-father (Ben Crawford). In the movie “Lost Boys,” the mother (Dianne Wiest) is recently divorced. One of the musical’s better ideas is to make this family of three on the run from the really bad dad, who shows up in Michael’s nightmares. The family’s fear and isolation fuels the musical’s best songs.
Michael sings “Belong to Someone” when he contemplates joining David’s gaggle of vampires. His mother sings “Wild” to her new boyfriend (Paul Alexander Nolan) when she reminisces about a life before her ex-husband. Benet and Bean are both in great singing voice, and, fortunately, both songs are keepers, written by The Rescues, an L.A. rock band that has written music for a few TV series, including “Grey’s Anatomy.”
The Rescues (Kyler England, Adrianne “AG” Gonzalez and Gabriel Mann) make an auspicious Broadway debut, but for every “Belong to Someone” and “Wild” they deliver a real clunker. Star’s big solo, “War,” is a female power ballad that’s pushed into being a declaration of, yes, war. Wirries’ Star emerges as the town’s most tiresome beard, and she deserves Benet’s Michael, who runs the emotional gamut from angry to angst.
The show ends with the anthem “If We Make It Through the Night.” It succeeds in turning the nun’s anthem “Climb Every Mountain” from “The Sound of Music” into something very cutting edge.
Michael Arden directs “The Lost Boys” as if it were an obstacle course I would not wish on any contestant of “Wipeout.” Even the Met Opera hasn’t used this many elevators to facilitate scene changes. Much scarier than the vampires is that set: will somebody fall into an elevator shaft, be crushed by a descending living room? Dane Laffrey’s scenic design can best be described in two words, ‘dangerous’ and ‘humongous.’
That aesthetic is contagious. Arden takes a relatively innocuous but sweet song, “Superpower,” and supersizes it. Sam tells us that young gay guys (those few who are not vampires) can be heroes, too. Pajak is a charming performer, and while he could handle the number on his own, Arden mucks up it with a lot of choristers dressed up as comic-book characters (garish costumes by Ryan Park).
“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.
