A Three-Story Set, a 65-Foot Fly Rig: The Lost Boys Promises a True Broadway Spectacle

Director Michael Arden and designer Dane Laffrey are all over Broadway, and their brotherhood is stronger than ever.

After each winning a Tony Award for their work on the currently running Maybe Happy Ending, the pair’s latest project, The Lost Boys, has descended upon Broadway at the Palace Theatre to mysterious fanfare. Based on Joel Schumacher's 1987 cult classic of the same name, the musical is honing in on the emotional vulnerability that underpins the disarmingly stylized vampire film.

“I was a big vampire fan growing up, of the Anne Rice persuasion, but I was somewhat eluded by The Lost Boys,” Arden admits. “The deeper I dug into it, as an adult, the more I realized it was really about family.”

The Peter Pan-inspired title was an intentional homage by the film’s original screenwriters, alluding to the ragtag family dynamic that saves wayward boys from the crushing weight of societal isolation. In The Lost Boys, there are multiple brotherhoods at play: the blood brothers, Michael and Sam, who have moved into a new town with their single mother; the local group of teenage rebel vampires who have found community amongst themselves; and the Frog Brothers, a pair of adolescent vampire hunters.

“We’re really exploring this idea of brotherhood,” Arden states as Laffrey nods fiercely. “Of course, there are familial brothers in the show, but this idea of found family that goes beyond gender, of being safe, protected and loved by a group of people you choose to belong to, has been a huge part of this production.”

It has also been a huge part of Arden and Laffrey’s own lives. The duo have been close friends and professional partners over the last 25 years, moving from roommates at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy to co-founding production company At Rise Creative, and working on a series of Broadway shows together (including Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, Once on This Island, A Christmas Carol, Parade, Maybe Happy Ending, and The Queen of Versailles). Where one goes, the other follows, the pair working in tandem as one of the strongest partnerships in the modern Broadway landscape.

“I’m not an only child, but I didn’t have an actual durable friendship until I went to Interlochen,” Laffrey states. “Michael and I, we had this similar hunger and curiosity about all the ways you can be a storyteller in this artform, and we unlocked some of that in each other. We still do, which is a nice thing this many years on. No one makes me more creative than Michael.”

Arden smiles softly. “I was immediately enamored with Dane's taste and his ability to both create and identify aesthetics. When we were roommates, that was the 24/7 discussion of our lives: We would intake media together, read plays together, write plays together, work on designing props for shows together, and building everything we ever needed to make the theatre we wanted. We were cohabitating, both literally and artistically. As an only child who felt very much alone before I was at Interlochen, it was beyond exciting to have this bond with someone that was both artistic and familial.”

That bond is now being pushed to its zenith with The Lost Boys, as the pair transform the Palace Theatre into Santa Carla, California, shirtless saxophone player and all. The musical is one of the most mysterious entries into the 2025–26 season, opening cold on Broadway without an out-of-town tryout. That decision was due, in part, to the scale of Laffrey’s design—a multi-story set spanning floor to rafters, which includes an extensive 65 foot fly rig. Arden promises a real visual spectacle, befitting of a supernatural story.

“It has been very exciting to build this show with Dane’s physical production in mind,” Arden states, leaning forward as Laffrey laughs lightly. “It’s insane. Dane and me and the rest of the design team are really creating a kind of singular experience, where you’re getting just as much information from the visual as you are from the aural.” 

"Dane has this mystical understanding of an audience's visual perception, long before a single set piece has been built. And his trust in that gives his designs a grace and a subtlety that I just don't have. Put a bunch of marshmallows in front of me, and I'll gorge on them all, because I can't help myself," Arden espouses as Laffrey laughs openly. "He never wants to, as the artist, overshadow the piece of art being made. And I find that incredibly beautiful, because that is a trait I don't see very often these days. He inspires me to calm down and consider the most important moments of visual impact, to ensure we're telling the story with a rigor and clarity that is emotionally moving to experience. He makes everyone around him classier."

Laffrey cocks his head to the side, carefully considering his words about his collaborator. "The thing I most highly prize about working with Michael is his endless curiosity. He has a constant hunger to look at life from a different angle. He has this tireless intensity and rigor that so many people just aren't capable of maintaining, to constantly question and re-examine and self edit. And that's an amazing ethos and trait to bring to the apex of a collaboration like The Lost Boys. There are so many moving parts on this production, we are both doing things that we have never done before, and he makes the risks everyone is taking exciting, rather than frightening."

The scale of the effort on The Lost Boys is such that Arden has even added a new credit to his Broadway resume: co-lighting designer. "When I came to Interlochen, I wanted to be a lighting designer." Arden confesses, smiling. "I ended up acting because that was where the opportunities were, and I felt like I needed to accept the position I was offered at Juilliard when it came along. When I was at Juilliard, old itches came back for writing and directing, but I never had the opportunity to design the way I wanted to. I love being a part of theatre in any way I can, but it is really satisfying to finally scratch this itch."

Arden is co-designing the lighting alongside the ever-employed Jen Schriever—The Lost Boys marks the two-time Tony nominee's 37th Broadway credit, albeit her first with Arden and Laffrey. Their vivid lighting design for The Lost Boys is embracing 80s excess while exploring an under-emphasized aspect of stage lighting design: darkness.

“Jen and I are really putting our minds together to explore the vampiric nature of light and darkness. It’s become a key part of our storytelling, in a way that is a bit more robust than lighting normally is in a Broadway musical.” Arden catches himself just before revealing a secret design element. “God, I can’t say anymore, but I’m really excited.” Laffrey snickers.

While the musical is sure to satisfy longtime fans of the film (worry not, the sexy sax man, bridge hijinks, and Rob Lowe poster are intact), the musical is a true adaptation, shifting a select number of details in the narrative to create a fresh story for the modern age. David's gang has been transformed from a rough and tumble group of boardwalk miscreants to a hypnotically energetic rock 'n' roll band, Michael and Sam's father has an increased presence, and the mysterious Star (Michael's love interest) has a much-needed backstory expansion.

As Laffrey puts it, bluntly: “The film is wonderful, but it is a kind of style piece, right? And look, we certainly held on to a lot of the style,”—he waves his hands wide—“but the catharsis of this story is so essential.”

One of the biggest changes to the material has been the heart-forward exploration of the Emerson family itself. "There is so much mileage, story wise, in what caused this family to move from Phoenix to California. The characters of Lucy and Star have so much interior life to chew on," Arden states, pausing as Laffrey chuckles. "No pun intended!"

As brothers Michael and Sam find themselves thrust into a supernatural secret, their mother Lucy Emerson is going through a transformation of her own. "What it means for a woman in the 1980s to leave her husband, and move her kids across the country without any real safety net, is the unspoken thread of the film that we've pulled to the surface. Even though it's called The Lost Boys, it was important to us at every stage in this adaptation that the female characters were drawn with as much intentionality and as much nuance as all of the men," Arden states as Laffrey nods definitively.

Though Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures is a producer on the stage show (and also behind the currently running Dog Day Afternoon), Laffrey and Arden maintain they feel free to take their own big bite out of the material. 

"It's tough, when you're translating IP, to make a genuinely satisfying-yet-fresh evening in the theatre," states Laffrey. "Regardless of where it came from, whether it's Shakespeare or an '80s movie, it can be a challenge to offer the audience catharsis when they know what's coming at the end of the story. Surprise can be elusive. This story, and these expansions, however ... I believe we have found the sweet spot here, and that's really wonderful to witness throughout the rehearsal process."

Adds Arden: “I didn't expect this vampire adventure teen biker gang movie to become so moving. It's both a high camp horror and adventure comedy, and a deeply moving family drama. Every time we get to the end of a run, I cry, and I love that. That's why I love the theatre. I want to laugh, I want to scream, and I want to cry. And hopefully, The Lost Boys audiences are going to do all those things.”