Looking for the lost origin story of The Lost Boys? Go straight to the source — Ali Louis Bourzgui. The Tony-nominated star of the hit Broadway musical plays the leader of the titular vampire pack, and has independently developed an entire history for how his alter ego, David, became the leader of Santa Carla’s most bloodthirsty rocker.
“I think of him as being born in 1890,” Bourzgui tells Gold Derby about his version of David, a role that Kiefer Sutherland originated onscreen in Joel Schumacher’s immortal 1987 feature film. “That means he can be around for the 1906 earthquake that’s referenced a lot during the show. The Lost Boys live in this old iron works factory that collapsed during that earthquake, and I think he was there for that and lost someone, and that’s part of his trauma.
“1890 also times out so that he could have enlisted in World War I, which is important for his backstory, too,” the actor continues. “The costume designer actually created this coat for me that has two gold chevrons on it, and that means he served a whole year in World War I.”
And those chevrons are about has far as The Lost Boys gets into David’s backstory. But Bourzgui teases that he has a nine-page narrative that gets even more detailed. “Maybe I’ll publish it for one of those Broadway flea markets,” he says with a grin. “As long as Warner Bros. doesn’t come after me!”
Not for nothing, but Bourzgui’s co-star, Maria Wirries, also created a personal history for her character, Star, who is part of the Lost Boys, but hasn’t gone full vamp yet. “She’s been with them for about a year,” the actress outlines. “She and David definitely had a relationship in the beginning and were deeply connected, but over time they’ve started to solidify into these antagonistic beings. She also hasn’t fed on a human yet, and there’s only so long you can pull that off. I played around with the idea of her eating pigeons when she’s sitting up by the Santa Clara billboard!”
While David’s World War I experiences and Star’s penchant for pigeon snacking seem like they could be great fodder for musical numbers, The Lost Boys notably doesn’t give the duo a duet that outlines their independent and shared histories. And according to The Rescues — the rock trio that wrote the music and lyrics for all 22 songs heard in the show — there’s no lost David and Star collab on the proverbial cutting room floor.
“We wrote maybe 60 songs for the show, so there’s quite a lot in the fridge as we call it,” says Kyler England. “But we never had one song that was just with the two of them. Because our cast of principles is so large, one of the challenges in the writing was finding a balance with all the mouths to feed and telling the story that we wanted to tell. We had to make it under five hours long!”
“There were things about their individual backstories in some of those songs that will probably never see the light of day,” teases England’s bandmate, Gabriel Mann. “There’s an element of mystery with this show that’s important preserve. I remember that we had notions about how David became a vampire and wrote a song that talked about it in major detail, but we ultimately concluded that it wasn’t necessarily helping our story, and might actually have been hurting our story.”
While Lost Boys fans might be pained about not getting the full details of David’s vampiric turn in song form, that focus on story resulted in a musical that’s been packing the cavernous Palace Theatre since its April opening. It also picked up a total of 12 Tony nominations — tying it for most-nominated production status with Schmigadoon! — including nods for Michael Arden‘s direction, the Rescues’ score and orchestrations, and the biggest prize of the night, Best Musical. And no matter what happens on Tony night, the show is destined to have a life after Broadway. The Rescues are currently overseeing the production of the original cast album, and a nationwide tour has been announced for 2028.
Here are some additional secrets from The Lost Boys, as told to Gold Derby by the people who made it.
Bonus content
Thanks to moments like “I’m here to tell you about the Avengers Initiative” and “I’m Alex by the way” moviegoers have become accustomed to waiting through the credits of cinematic blockbusters for bonus scenes. The Lost Boys brings that practice to Broadway with a final narrative beat that follows the rousing final number, “If We Make It Through the Night.” The scene in question closes the loop on a thread that runs through the show as a woman that’s searching for her missing husband stumbles upon the Lost Boys’s now-vacant lair and discovers the blood-filled chalice that spawns new vampires, thus ensuring that Santa Clara’s vamp problem isn’t over yet.
“If you’re one of those people who sneak away during the curtain call, sorry, but you’re missing out,” Lost Boys director Michael Arden says with a mischievous smile. “That was an idea I had early on and joked about with the writers, David Hornsby and Chris Hoch. Because there are always going to be vampires, you know? And there are also sequels to The Lost Boys. So we wanted to leave the door open for fans of the genre, and the way we did that was by going: “After the final bow, let’s scare the bejesus out of people one more time.”
Because the idea of a Broadway post-credits scene is so unusual, scenic designer Dane Laffrey remembers the production dropping that last moment for three of the show’s preview performances when entire scenes and songs were still in flux. “We thought, ‘We’ll probably be fine without it,’ but people were pissed,” Laffrey says, laughing. “The cast wanted it back more than anybody else! They were like, ‘We’ll talk faster so there’s time for it.'”
The audience was pro-bonus scene, too, as co-lighting designer, Jen Schriever, can attest. “Someone came up to me after one of the previews, looked me dead in the eyes, and said: ‘I’ve seen the show several times — put it back,'” she remembers, adding that she immediately knew which “it” he was referrring to. “I said, ‘Do not worry!'”
Reactions like that were a potent reminder for the trio of how important the preview process is for Broadway musicals — especially those that don’t have the benefit of an out of town tryout before coming to the heart of the New York theater world. “The bonus scene was one of the most important parts of the preview process,” Laffrey says now. “When it wasn’t there, we all realized, ‘Oh, this isn’t the show.'”
“Previews were a time to experiment, and I’m so grateful to the audiences that were part of our chemistry lab,” Arden echoes. “I would love to keep changing things, but we can’t!”
Super duper
While Act 1 of The Lost Boys mostly follows the movie’s narrative, up to and including that wild motorcycle ride, the second half gets to take us deeper into the characters’ inner lives through song. And one of the most striking numbers in that regard is “Superpower,” where Sam Emerson (Benjamin Pajak) — the youngest member of the Emerson clan who become enmeshed with David and the Lost Boys — fully embraces his dual identity as a comic book geek and a gay teenager.
It’s a moment that’s staged for both maximum earnestness and maximum fun with Sam literally confronting supervillains that could have stepped right out of the comic book pages. In that way, “Superpower” is knowingly closer in spirit to the oh-so-’60s Batman show than the oh-so-’80s Lost Boys.
“Tone was the trickiest and the most rewarding art of this endeavor,” Arden says. “In order for the vampires to actually be scary, we also needed to be able to laugh at the imagined comic book-style vampires that Sam creates and show that his imagination is ultimately his greatest power. I wanted it to be a celebration where Sam defeats the comic book vampires and now he has to go kill some real vampires.
“That may not be for everybody,” Arden adds, acknowledging that the tonal switch-up might catch some audience members off guard. “But The Lost Boys movie is also a horror film that has lots of camp and comedy in it. It was important to us that we give the audience all of that here — we wanted to stretch their emotions in every way possible.”
“This show is a tonal smoothie,” Laffrey notes. “We wanted that moment to feel joyful and ecstatic, because the second act is very heavy emotionally. So, yeah, we wanted to add some ‘Bam’ and ‘Pow.'”
As the ones who wrote “Superpower,” the Rescues had a specific intention with the song. “The story of someone’s queerness being what makes them special has kind of been told,” says band member AG. “We wanted to write an elevated story about how your superpower isn’t being gay, it’s because you’re different and being gay is part of being different. That was what was personally exciting to me as a gay person writing that song: Sam isn’t defined by being gay, it’s just part of who he is.”
“‘Superpower’ is a little counterintuitive because we’re shining a light on the idea that your differences are what make you cool, but to me being cool is normal — and the word ‘normal’ is laced with problems,” adds Mann. “What the show does really well is let everybody just be who they are. And what we’re saying with that song is you can be anything what you want to be at any time and no one should be telling you what that is. That can be hard to explain to young people, because they see all these things out there in the world telling them to be this or that, and it’s hard not to believe that when you’re young.”
“I’ll take that one step further and relate it to us, The Rescues,” Mann adds. “We figured out what we sound like individually and how that comes together as a band, and that’s what this show is built on. We wrote songs that represent our most true and natural state, and whenever we veered away from that, it ceased to be good. So if somebody doesn’t like a song [like “Superpower”] that’s fine, but it is an honest statement of who we are — and the kind of music we make.”
Sing the friendly skies
One added challenge of writing music for The Lost Boys was remembering that the cast would occasionally be airborne when belting out certain tunes. “There were times where we had to remind ourselves, ‘They need to not be singing in this moment,'” Mann remembers. “For example, that big sequence before the end of Act 1 where all the vampires are flying, Michael told us ‘You need to let them focus on what they’re doing so they can be safe.’ The safety factor is of utmost importance — you can’t mess around with that.
“At the same time, sometimes the actors are just floating in space and they can just sing like that,” Mann continues with a laugh. “You’d think you’d have to be rooted to the ground to sing that way, but they seem fine.”
As one of the actors who has to sing while floating in space, Bourzgui has a few pro tips. “Honestly, it’s fun,” he says. “They have me singing some of my highest notes while I’m up there. There’s a singing exercise that a lot of teachers will have you do where you put your back up against a wall while singing, and that helps with keeping your ribs lifted, which is similar to being in a harness. Sometimes my body wants to sing even higher when I get hoisted up!”
Wirries revels that she missed out on her chance to take flight when the climactic fight between the Emersons and the Lost Boys was restaged. “There was a whole section where I flew in and there were these battles in the air,” the actress recalls. “So I did originally fly, and it did not make the final cut, which I’m OK with. Those harnesses are tough! I’ve got to credit all the boys that wear them a lot in the show.”
