The first vampire descends from the shadows, high above the stage, barely visible as he comes in for the kill. Four vampires disappear into a dark void below the stage after dropping, one by one, from a trestle bridge.
In “The Lost Boys,” a new musical based on the 1987 film, spectacle abounds. It is being staged in a Broadway house with an only-in-New-York real estate story: After a century on the ground, the Palace Theater was hoisted 30 feet in the air to make room for street-level development. That project led to an unusual amount of space below the stage, and “The Lost Boys” is the first show to demonstrate the stagecraft potential offered by the theater’s height and depth since the building reopened in 2024.
“We wanted the space to feel incredibly cavernous, and we were interested in playing with vertical space,” said Michael Arden, the show’s Tony-nominated director. “We’re used to things coming on from stage left and stage right, but we wanted to deliver things from above and below, given that vampires attack from above, and pull you down below a little bit.”
“The Lost Boys,” about a family hoping for a fresh start in a California town that turns out to have a vampire problem, is nominated for 12 Tony Awards, including for its set, lighting and sound. It’s a big show, in every sense of the word — costly, with a $25 million budget; loud, with a pop-rock score by the Rescues; and spectacle-heavy, with nonstop motion, much of it automated, involving set pieces, and people, moving on and offstage, left and right, up and down, with a lot of backstage work required to ensure nothing collides.
