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Thank you very much. That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish. I'm sure you do, but Mr. Gr, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking to the star. Well, hello all you theater lovers, both out and proud and on the deal. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koflik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And we've got our final, final, final review episode of the season. We are covering the last new musical to open on Broadway, the Lost Boys. We will get into that in. But first, we have a couple of reviews that I would like to read because y' all have been killing it with these reviews lately and I want to give them their due. So first up, if we will cue the lightning. The Piazza Overture, 5 stars. Great podcast from BroadwayLover17. Started listening during the Cabaret series and since then I've been hooked. What a great podcast. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and passion with us. Thank you. Next up, essential listening for any theater lover By Alex Podcast Duchess413.5 stars. Matt is part dramaturg slash historian, part critic, part fan, part educator. And yet, somehow this show isn't intimidating or stuffy. Remember that. Rather, it feels like having the most intellectually stimulating chat with your funniest and most brilliant friend. Who's this friend? In a world when apathy for the arts seems to abound, it's life affirming to hear Matt's passion and incredible depth of knowledge never stop this pod. Thank you very much. First of all, don't you tell me what to do. I mean, unless you're paying my bills, in which case I will pay you some mind. But thank you. That's very kind of you. I really appreciate it. Y' all are really doing a lovely job with these reviews and giving me some words that I myself have never used in my day to day. So showing me up with your knowledge and your wisdom and your intelligence. Okay, let's get into it. I know that's the reason why we're all here. The Lost Boys. Yep. Look at her. The Lost Boys is based off of the 1987 film that was directed by Joel Schumacher. It has had a long cult following and I had always known it to be a major film in the queer cinema canon. I had never actually saw the movie. It always just kind of looked rather silly to me and I. It just. It was one of those things where because People were so vocal about it. Not like a huge majority, but like enough people were vocal about it. And it's that thing where like when people get annoying about something, you admire their passion, but it also, it starts to bug you. It's why certain fandoms in Broadway shows have turned off people from seeing said shows because they're just so intense about it. And we love the passion, but sometimes it can be a double edged sword. But this is to say, I only knew the basic premise of the movie. I knew the cast and I knew that there was allegedly a lot of of homoeroticism. And the hope was that that was going to get carried over into the musicale. And I didn't really know the premise beyond, you know, family goes to a new town and there are teenage vampires. That was all I really knew. So I went into this with a pretty open slate. I saw it about a week before they froze it and I wanted to wait to review it until I could see it again in its frozen state and review that. So I. This is pretty fresh. I will say. I will give my hot opinion in one second. I But I will also say when thinking about the two performances about 10 days apart, maybe even a week apart, I can't rightfully say, or no, two weeks apart, they were two weeks apart. I can't rightfully say that I could spot major changes between my two performances. It was somehow about five minutes shorter, but that's really it. So there was no huge structural changes. No new songs were added between my performance and this performance. I had already seen it when Shoshana Bean's new Act 1 song was put in. It's possible that like some finessing was done in Act 2 with pacing in the finale and whatnot. Act 1 seems pretty untouched. It was also about the same length as two weeks prior. So it. I think I could have gotten away with seeing it unfrozen, but I'm glad that I did so I could have my journalistic ethics in place for this upfront. I will say I actually quite enjoyed a lot of the Lost Boys. I did not fully love it. It's not a 10 out of 10 for me. It's not really an 8 out of 10. I would probably give it a 7 out of 10. A lot of that has to do with the second act and I will get to that in a minute. But that's just for the people who want to avoid spoilers and want to kind of just get my upfront opinion on this. Now we'll get into the nitty gritty. So the show covers the life of one Michael Emerson who's 16, 17 years old teenage boy played by LJ Bennett. He moves from Phoenix, Arizona with his mother Lucy and his younger brother Sam, played by Shoshana Bean and Benjamin Pajak Pajak respectively. They are moving to Santa Carla, California to move into his mother Lucy. Sorry his grand his deceased grandfather's home that has been inherited by Lucy. And they're also moving because their father has left them. Their father, it's implied in the beginning of the show was rather abusive. And as the show continues and we learn little nuggets about their home life, we learn just how abusive their father was. He was an alcoholic, physically violent, verbally abusive and they so they he abandoned them. But also when Lucy inherited the her childhood home from her father, this was deemed a fresh start and so they moved back to Lucy's hometown. Now of course, in between Lucy last living there and then moving away, raising a family, coming back, Santa Carla has become what is known as the murder capital of the world by Alan and Edgar Frog. The Frog brothers who are self identified cartoon enthusiasts, comic book enthusiasts and vampire hunters. There are a lot of missing signs all over the boardwalk. And while no one in the main cast, Michael, Lucy or Sam can really figure out what's going on, the Frog brothers inform Sam it is absolutely due to vampires. And wouldn't you know it, Michael falls in with said vampire gang. The leader is David as played by Ali Lewis Bors Borski. I never know how to say his name. And if you listen to our upcoming Tony's episode, Juan Ramirez says his name perfectly like seven times. And it just some reason hasn't sunk in yet. I will learn it by the time we get to the Tony Awards, I promise. Because I am an ally for talented people who will most likely be nominated for Tony Awards. Michael gets involved with this gang through a young woman that he has fallen for. Her name is Star. Star sings in David and his friend's band. Michael falls in with Star, he falls for her. Star gets him involved with David's gang and it's revealed that the gang is a group of vampires they have slowly turning Star and Michael into vampires. By the end of act one they're both half vampires. And they both decide in Act 2 that they are going to turn their backs on the vampire gang and try to fix everything. Sam and the Frog brothers decide that they're going to kill the head vampire because that's the only way to to heal the other vampires. And they believe that it's David. But actually, spoiler alert, it is not David. The lead, the head vampire is a man named Max who owns the local video store, who hires Lucy at the beginning of Act 1, beginning to middle of Act 1, and starts to get involved with her a little bit. And he reveals himself at the end of the show to be the head vampire, and he is killed. And Lucy, Michael and Sam start to heal and bond and move on as a family, and they can get through the night. End of show. Vampire musicals, notoriously, have done very, very terribly on stage. The only vampire show I can recall that has done well on Broadway is Dracula with Frank Langella. Musicals like Dance of the Vampires, Endless Dat, and Dracula have never done well. And part of the reason for that is vampire stories, in their essence, are a very earnest and horny genre of storytelling. Horniness is something that musicals have not really been able to harness on Broadway, I've argued. I think the last truly horny musical is Lachius the Wild Party, but that's a very toxic kind of horniness. There's a difference between sexiness and horniness. You know, like Moulin Rouge is kitschy little sexiness. It's not really horny. Lost Boys is hormonal and violent, but it's not really horny. West side Story, you could argue is horny, but you need a production to bring that out of it. Lost Boys is not really a horny musical. And as somebody who was promised yearning homoerotic vampires, I will say up front, I did not get that from this homoeroticism. I'm sorry. She's nowhere to be found in this musical. What we get is the younger brother Sam, who I've been told in the movie, played by Corey Haim, is definitely queer coded. He's not expressed as gay in the movie, but it's sort of like there are traits that you could apply to queerdom. And in the musical, they make it that he has an eye for shoe wear and he has an obsession with Rob Lowe, and it's treated rather innocently at first, but then he starts to kind of think that maybe his quote unquote queerness that his mother refers to in the carousel kind of way. You're a queer one, Julie Jordan. No, like, you're odd. Sam takes on that word and it's more homosexual meaning in Act 2 and this and comes into his own as a. As a pansy, so to speak, and has this big, I could be a superhero, and I could be a queer superhero. And I'll talk about that in a Second. But yeah, like it's not really. I would not call it queerness. I would call it a blip. It is not explored. It is not really a storyline. It's a moment. There's a bit of a non binary undertone to the character of. I think it's Alan. Of Alan Frog. Yeah. Played by Jennifer Duca. In the movie, the Frog brothers are cisgender male brothers and in the musical they turn it into a male presenting and female presenting character. Unclear how they truly identify. It's the 1980s, they don't really have that vocabulary. But it's a running joke that Alan Frog's full name is Alana goes by Alan. Or it's like it's. Yeah, Alana goes by Alan or something like that. And when they refer to themselves as the Frog brothers and people question that, they always go, did I stutter? And it's fine. It's not the funniest bit, nor is it like the most empowering bit. It's just sort of there, you know, it's that kind of lip service that it's harmless. But it's not exactly the moment that sometimes people think it is, at least in Broadway theater that's really kind of all the queerness that I would argue is wrapped up in Lost Boys. Some could make an argument for the aesthetic and the gender fluidity or like the sexual fluidity of the vampires. Even David is played by Ali. He is absolutely a heteronormative alpha male of his group, but he's got that sort of glam punk rock, Bowie esque aesthetic, which in a lot of ways you could argue has a queer sensibility. Bowie absolutely had that about himself, but that's also just kind of how it is in the 80s. You know, there's. There's a certain effeminate quality to a lot of the pretty boys of the 80s, the Rob Lows of. And the heartthrobs like that of the 80s. You look at, you know, the super, super short shorts that men would wear in the summer films in that decade and it's sort of, yeah, there's. There was a lot of fashion and a lot of traits that we would now equate with queerness or femininity that straight thinking men just had and had no problem. And so I don't view David as any kind of stand in for queerdom, nor do I really view the vampires as such. A friend of mine was talking about sort of this sense of belonging that the character of Michael has. You know, that's. It's a very early want of his, you know, he wants to belong somewhere. He feels restless, he feels abandoned. He's being forced to grow up faster than he would like. Now that they have left their father, he's becoming the man of the house and he doesn't. And he sort of resents that. He doesn't want to be responsible. He wants to enjoy himself. He's. He thinks, you know, that's his right as a kid. And I get that. And I think that sense of wanting to belong is something that is not necessarily specifically queer. I mean, it's definitely a trait that we apply to queer coded journeys. A character who doesn't fit in in their surroundings, who then wants to belong to a different surrounding. But also I think wanting to belong is something that everyone can join in on. It's less that I find it less of a queer journey because I find queer journeys like, say, Ariel and the Little Mermaid. Wanting to belong somewhere else is a very specific situation of her environment does not understand or accept her, and she wants to go where she thinks she will be accepted. Michael's situation is a little different because he is understood and accepted in his current status, his current environment. His mom loves him dearly. She's supportive. She wants to know more about him. Uh, she, you know, she loves him unconditionally. And he doesn't have necessarily an. There's not an other that he already knows. He wants that sort of an other in general. And when he attaches himself to David's gang, it's not because when he watches them, he sees himself in them. He sees Star and he wants. And he gravitates towards Star. It's a very. Which is a very heteronormative, no homo element to that storyline. He incidentally finds himself belonging with David's gang for all of 10 minutes towards the end of Act 1. But it's not really. I do not. I personally do not subscribe to the narrative that the Michael David storyline has homo undertones to it. Maybe it's because I was promised something that I and I that was a lot more queer that I did not get. So that was a little disappointing to me. I'll go back now to the things that I do really like about this because I just went on a lot about the queer stuff. But I will say what I really do like about this musical is kind of how much of a lot that it is. We made jokes with Sam Ekman a while back about best most. And ultimately I would say the Lost Boys would win that category of best most. It's When I first saw it, my first thought during intermission was like, this is a lot of musical. And I meant that both positively and a little shadily. And I still believe that. I do think in the two weeks between when I saw it and when I first saw it and when it froze, I do believe that they shaved off a couple of minutes and helped tighten it a bit, which helps because act one definitely was dragging the first time. And it feels a little bit less. Act one feels a little less. Everything but the kitchen sink. So much is just like constant movement, constant colors, constant earnestness. There are. There's definitely a 1980s mega musical vibe about the Lost Boys in the sense that everyone feels very deeply and very passionately, which is what you want for a vampire musical. The stakes are high. It's life after death, it's for eternity. It's killing in order to live. No, there's a lot of stakes to that, including stakes. And so you do kind of need epic scale to all of that. And I do think that the music reflects a lot of that. It is, I would call it energetically emo music. There was talk at the beginning of previews that this was a very ballad heavy score, and there are indeed quite a few ballads. But I also think that that's unfair. There are some uptempos. It's just that, you know, there's no. No, there's no corn pudding in this show. There are. I mean, the opening number, I think, while I wouldn't call it necessarily a banger, it does have a lot of energy to it. It takes us from Phoenix all the way to Santa Carla. There's the no More Monsters. I think it establishes our main characters. Perhaps the lyrics are a little on the nose and simplistic, but that's also kind of a trait of the mega musical of it all. The show itself is a bit of a soap opera. And I would argue that the simplistic lyrics on a second listen allow the soap opera element of the story to unfold and not feel totally cheesy. Right. You want to maintain a tone for your narrative that the audience can follow and stay on board with, because if you have jarring tones, then it confuses your audience of what they're supposed to think of certain moments. This was something we talked about a bit with, like, Queen of Versailles. Right. The F. Marie Abraham Song of the Timeshare King is a campy number. It's meant to be comedic. They don't do it earnestly, but the show always had a mishandling of what kind of comedy it was going for, if it was going for social satire, if it was going for full blown musical theater camp. And so when something like that number happens, audiences looked at it like it was Springtime for Hitler. And I'm watching going, no, I know that they're trying to be funny here. It's just that we did not establish that this is where we were willing to go for the first 30 minutes of this show. So by doing this number, it feels a bit like a betrayal. And Lost Boys, to its credit, has none of that betrayal for the first act. I would argue When Act 2 begins, that's the first betrayal. At the end of act one is when Michael gets to his halfway point of turning into a vampire and he breaks through the window of Sam's bedroom. And that's when Sam kind of realizes that something is up with Michael. And Act 2 begins and. And Sam realizes, I think my brother's a vampire. And the show goes into extraordinarily cheeky territory, which we had never done before. In Act 1, it was mostly earnest, with a little bit of tongue in cheek humor sprinkled throughout. And I found it quite effective having humor sprinkled throughout Act 1 allowed the audience chances to breathe, chances to relax. It kept you from sort of rolling your eyes of a show taking itself far too seriously. And then Act 2 just goes into this weird, silly land that is both not quite funny enough and also is just so inconsistent from everything we had. It's like eating a cupcake after you've had a steak or like. Or even like halfway through your steak eating a cupcake and you're. It's like, why? I had all of this succulent flavor and now I'm tasting pure sugar. Like, what? What is this? And the show doesn't stick with that tone for the rest of Act 2, but it pops up again about two more times. And again, for me, it's just like such a tonal whiplash that it's kind of surprising to me that they wouldn't address it or they thought that this was an okay way to go. I mean, the super power song that Sam sings in Act 2 is such an easy cut that I can't believe they never did it. My brother is a. I would maybe tweak and get rid of, you know, the sliding vampires and the Elvira's coming out of the shower. It's just so. It's just a little too, like, Titanic disaster, the musical. You know, we never went in that direction before, and now we're doing that and it's a little baffling and some people are going to take it like some people took the timeshare king. I understand it's meant to be funny and it's, it's just such a throw thrown moment, both of them. The other issue that Act 2 has is a finale that I just simply don't buy. One is the final showdown with, you know, Michael and Sam and the Frog brothers and Star. And then Max revealing himself to be the head vampire. Sam, Michael and the Frog brothers all, you know, they kill the final vampires before Max shows up. Pretty quickly. It's a. It's pretty underwhelming in terms of fight choreo in terms of just how quickly everybody gets defeated. It's sort of, of a whole setup of we have to defeat them. It all gets done sort of 1, 2, 3. They do allow Paul Alexander Nolan another moment to really kind of revel in his charisma and the power of his voice and allow him to relish in being. Going from being sweet and dorky to fully evil for about a minute. But it still feels for me a little bit under baked for a show that took its sweet time getting Michael to the point of slowly turning into a vampire. The defeat of everybody happens incredibly quickly. And then after that there's a finale. It's called if We Make it through the Night. And it's this kind of finale that it's. Les Mis kind of started this finale and it kept going with shows like Ragtime and with shows like the Color Purple where the entire cast comes on stage, sings a nine part harmony, phases out and sings about how they found love, light and God. One of the three, or all three, and the hope of tomorrow, you know. And usually characters come back from the dead, like in Ragtime or in Les Mis to join the company for the full tableau. Lost Boys does the exact same thing, including bringing the vampires back. And the song itself is good. I like the song. It's pretty. I like the metaphor of make it through the night, you know, make it to the day, whatever. That's all fine. Next Normal also kind of does this now that I'm realizing it. But I will say I did not find emotionally it to be quite earned. Maybe that part of that is because there's all these logistics about who's the head vampire and how we're going to kill everybody and then killing Max as quickly as we do. It doesn't feel like we've totally reached this conclusion. Another part of this is because with act one of an issue I have is by spending so much time focusing on Michael's story, the show has trouble for the first half weaving back in Sam and Lucy as characters and their narratives and how they tie into Michael. It's long stretches in Act 1 until we get back to them. And Act 2, by being shorter in nature, just allows their character arcs to kind of get a lot more rushed through. And how they interweave with each other is more rushed through. And I just don't feel like the table setting was fully done in Act 1. There are points where it happens. You see the moments where the book writers and Michael Arden try to remind us of where everyone's at in their lives and how they're connected to each other and what's wrong with everything. But again, it's just sort of a little bit of. We spend extremely long times with Michael, Michael with star, Michael with David, and then, oh, yeah, by the way, Lucy's here and here's her song. Oh, and act two. Okay, here's Sam again. And so the coming of them together as a family at the end of the show is not fully locked in for me. And then the vampires coming back is not for me. The moment that I feel like they think it is, it's not moving. Because for the entire show they've been straight up murderers and manipulative and evil. They've been the full on villains. So them coming back in the finale to join us and getting through the night, I do not understand the emotional potency that the creatives think is there. So if someone can explain that to me, I would really appreciate it because it seemed to affect a couple of people around me. But then another couple of us were looking at the people who were emotionally affected and going, okay. Part of it is also just the magic of musical theater. You have 20 people with amazing voices singing four part harmony amazingly. And it's like, yeah, put it in my veins. Physically, the show is also pretty unbeatable. It's an extraordinary set by Dane Laughrey. The lightning design is done by both Jen Shriver and Michael Arden. I think the lighting and the set are pretty stellar and work beautifully together. The effects are mostly strong. There is a good deal of fly choreography. The flying choreography for Act 1 is pretty impeccable. There's a little bit teased at the beginning in a big sort of jump scare prelude. And then the real flight happens when it's a scene that's allegedly famous in the film where Michael goes out with the brother of vampires after having drunk wine with blood in it which is sort of the initiation to half turn him into a vampire. They all jump from a bridge into sort of the mist. And Michael does the same. And rather than fall to the ground, he sort of falls into nothingness before he eventually lands in his bed. And it's a really beautiful effect where once LJ Bennett lets go, he's sort of floating in blackness. And by having very stark lighting and, you know, well placed wires, it from. If you're at enough of a distance, it looks very impressive. And the rest of the vampire gang in that scene, the way that they float also is very ethereal and beautiful. Where the flying starts to become a little more static is in Act 2, when there's a bit more of a trickery to it. When there's a bit more of a fighting complex to it, it becomes a little. You start to realize the limitations of the wires in Act 2, whereas in Act 1, because it's done very simply and quickly, it is far more effective. Act two, when they try to kind of stretch their wings a bit more, so to speak, you see the limitations of it all. And so it. It doesn't impress quite as much as it does in the first act. The design still does. Arden has a lot of really fluid staging, a lot of beautiful stage pictures. I think that the first like 25 minutes of the show are fucking rock solid. Whether you like the Sound of the Music, whether you can get on board with the lyrics, is your own journey. But in terms of musical theater storytelling, it is very efficient. It gets us through the opening number where we understand the three main characters, their relationship to each other, their history, where off to what everybody wants. We get Michael out of the house pretty quickly to the pier so we can see the, you know, new environment that they're in. We meet David and Star pretty quickly. After that, everything kind of happens in a very fluid, almost cinematic way while still remaining entirely theatrical. And it's really, really cool. To me, I do think on a storytelling level, it writes a check that I don't think the rest of the show quite caches, at least in terms of energy. You know, as I said, it's a very high energy first 20 to 30 minutes and then it starts taking its time and there are thrilling, beautiful moments, but it doesn't have that kind of steam train energy that I find really impactful from some of the best musicals. It's not necessarily that you're going fast, but you are. But you can always sort of feel like you're moving sometimes it's going at a Steady pace of like 30 miles per hour before it accelerates to 50. Then for a really crazy moment, it goes to 70, then 80, then 90, and then goes back to 30. So no matter what, you always feel like you are going towards a destination narratively, musically, aesthetically. And there are a couple of moments in Lost Ways for me where it kind of slows down and will halt from time to time. It does pick itself back up. I do think that there are strong moments in Act 2. It's not all bad. I think it's kind of a mess. Not tone wise. The story remains relatively clear. There's some things about the lore of vampires and how Max is able to sort of get away with being undetected for so long that get said very quickly and swept under the rug and definitely left me with some questions. It left a few people, some questions about it. But that is also sort of at that moment in the show when Lost Boys puts its foot on the accelerator and it's like, stop asking questions. We're going, we're going, we're going. Which is maybe the smartest thing that they could do. So even though I'm like, those final fight sequences are kind of feel a little truncated and don't feel quite as satisfying, the upside of that is, well, by going as fast as we do, you don't have time to ask enough questions about the vampire lore. You're just on board with all the tricks and getting people dead and then yada, yada, yada. Any other things I want to say about it? I mean, standout songs. I think the number one song in act two is called Wild. It's a duet between Lucy and Max on their first unofficial date, where they end up in sort of an abandoned playground where Lucy used to play, hang out with her friends when she was younger and talking about how she would love to get back to a time when she was wild and sort of reclaim that youthful energy she has as she goes forward. And you know, she and Max kind of lock in emotionally and mentally in that song. And it's more importantly a time for Shoshana Bean and Paula Alexander Nolan to fucking wail and just be alone on stage, have no one else with them and just go to town vocally. And you sit there and you go, oh, right. This is what grownups do. To quote Natalie Portman in May December, this is what grown ups do. I am. We know how I feel about Mr. Nolan. I think he is our. One of our greatest singing actors around right now. He's such a special talent he's such a smart, unique actor with an incredible voice, a grounded presence. He's able to apply himself to all different genres of musical theater and straight plays. He's now played a villain three times in a row. Four times overall. Three times in a row. A four in with Dr. Zhivago. Five if we count Jesus Christ Superstar, which kind of counts because it's from the perspective of Judas. I mean, he does his job very well. The job he has is kind of a mid job. He is not the role that people walk away thinking about, not just because he's the villain, but because he just doesn't have that much to do. He spends most of act one being dorky, not doing much vocally. Act two, he gets the big duet with Shoshana and then a nice sort of high note before he dies. And that's sort of it in terms of the rest of the performances. Shoshana, I think everyone does a really strong job. I don't think there's anybody who's bad. I think that Benjamin Pajak as Sam, you know, we all saw him as Winthrop in Music man, or some of us saw him in Oliver at Encores. He's a very talented young guy. I think he's got a great career ahead of him. He's sort of in this weird part in his teens where his voice is changing, and so he's not able to wail in the way that everyone else can because he's literally going through it, physically going through it. But he's got stage presence, he's got charm. The role is sort of written rather annoyingly, and he sort of leans into that, which I wish that he would kind of maybe pull back on that a little bit. It's an earnest, nerdy vibe, and I think he can let up on some of the comical mugging that he's doing. It would allow Sam to still be annoying, but in a way that's, you know, genial and. And. And charismatic. L.J. bennett is, you know, he's super cute. He's got a great voice. He and Ali both have these, like, thick vocal folds, so they sing with this sort of heavy, masculine sound that we haven't really heard since the 90s. And I'm obsessed with it. It's why I loved how Lea Michelle sang in Funny Girl. I was like, oh, my God. Not since Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner in Sideshow have we heard such thick singing. And so I'm really thrilled that that kind of singing is back In Lost Boys. LJ also really commits himself to Michael's sort of emo, nobody understands me vibe. The problem with that is I find that Michael's often, for Acts 1, kind of insufferable of a character. It's intentional because he has to learn that the community that he's always been looking for has been there all along. Where he's wanting to belong has always been there. It's also, again, why I don't necessarily find Lost Boys and Michael's journey to be a queer narrative. Because they wanting to belong somewhere, and then finding a group to belong with only for that group to turn on you and then going back home is sort of not really the narrative that a lot of queer people have found in their lives. But he plays his arc well. It's not his fault that I find Michael kind of a wet blanket and insufferable in Act 1. That's how he's written, and he's doing the job. You kind of wish that there were a bit more shades to him in Act 1. He's got, like, a charismatic cheekiness with Star, but I'm sort of over the leading man turning on the charisma only when there's a girl he likes in front of him. You want him to have some other interests. You want him to have a couple of, like, save the cat moments, and not literally saving a damsel in distress or anything like that, but just, like, moments where you go, oh, this is why I'm gonna follow your journey, other than the fact that I have to, because you're written as our lead. Why do I wanna watch you? Just because you're going through stuff is not enough for me. Just because you look and sound like LJ Bennett is not enough. So that's sort of another issue I have with the show. But luckily, because the cast is strong, it's able to sort of, if not always, overcome work with that issue that I have. Shoshanna, once again, is doing a musical where she's making breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the kitchen all the time. And I think she's prepared, like, two different meals in this show. And I'm like, okay, so that's a tenth of the times we were preparing meals in Hell's Kitchen. But still, that's two Broadway musicals in a row, Shosh, where you're cooking on stage for your kids. That's. Let's find another show where she's not in the kitchen, shall we? And then, waitress, she was bacon. Let's get Shoshana Bean out of the kitchen. Out of the kitchen and center stage, please. But she Does a really lovely job. Which Shoshana Bean has sort of started making a post Covid career out of, is being the grounded center of like kind of wild musicals where there's a lot of personality around her and she's sort of the holding force, the glue of it all. And she does a really nice job with. Without being sort of a downer or fading into the background, which it's easy to do in a show like this because everything is going on all the time. Always in terms of Tony nominations, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious it is a lock for nominations for musical score and book. It's just. It is. It's a big, big musical. There's no way in which Beaches or Queen of Versailles is getting in over it. There's no way that, you know, like three straight plays with music are going to get in over lost ways for score. This is a genuine original score. I think the music is very effective. It's a lot of music. It's big music. Some songs definitely are cuttable. I think that Sam's Act 2 song is cuttable. I think his opening of Act 2 song could be tweaked a little bit. Star has a song called War that I personally find a little cuttable. The actress playing Star, her, it's not Cameron Loyal, Maria Wiriz W I R R I E S Let me know in the discord how we pronounce that. But she's got an amazing voice and she does the sort of like I am forlorn vibe. Well, it's the one note they really give her. For most of the show, she's like kind of punk rock Manic Pixie dream girl for the first 20 minutes. And then as soon as things start to get a little real, she becomes forlorn. Manic Pixie dream girl. And those are two very distinct shades, but they're also one shade nonetheless, which adds again into the sort of the earnest 80s mega musical of it all. Everyone's playing a bit of a trope and going to the back of the wall with it. So it's the assignment that she's given and she does it well. But her, you know, her big song in Act 2, while she sounds amazing, I'm just sort of like, ah, I really don't think we need it. It's a one statement song. I would rather that it. I would like it if the song was integrated into maybe some story. If there was a decision that Starr makes into the song. She doesn't really make any decision. It's sort of A here's where I am in this moment. It's sort of like how in One Day More. One Day More isn't a story song. The only thing that happens in that song is Marius decides he's going to fight with his friends in the revolution rather than follow Cosette. That's one thing in a four minute song. Everything else is just everybody stating where they are at in that moment before the curtain comes down. And that's sort of what Starr is doing in this moment. It's like the Eponine track in One Day More for three and a half minutes. And it's just Eponine's track, nobody else. But yeah, in terms of score, that's sort of how I feel it's getting nominated. I don't see it winning. If it wins, it's just because it's so big and epic and that might work for some people. I also don't know if it's gonna work for everybody. I do think Michael Arden's getting in for direction. He does a really strong job. I mean, just if we're talking the physical job of aesthetic and staging and sort of uniting a company and helming a new musical on Broadway with no out of town and not a lot of time to make changes, he got what started as like a three hour musical at the beginning of previews to two and a half hours with like three ish weeks. Three and a half weeks, really, of previews. That's quite impressive. And I think. And it's a nice bounce back from Queen of Versailles. So I do think he's getting in. I think there's a world in which it could get in. For choreography. There's not a lot of movement. It's pretty seamless. With Arden staging, you could argue that plus the fly choreography will be eligible, in which case I think that they have a shot at a nomination for choreography. I think they're going to go up and down the line with design, with nominations, set costumes, lighting, sound design. I could see orchestrations happening as well. In terms of performances, I really think the only two Lockes we have are Ali as David and Shoshana as Lucy in Featured. Everything else is pretty up for grabs. LJ does a really good job, but I think now that Andrew Durand is eligible in Leading Actor, which, oh, by the way, disregards some of my takes yesterday because as soon as I finished recording the Tony Awards released their final ruling of eligibility. So we have Stephanie Hsu and Andrew Durand eligible in leading performances in a musical. That was a flip. We had Schminga Doone eligible for best score. That was a flip. Laurie Metcalf and featured for Death of a Salesman. We knew that Alden and featured for Beck D. Shaw. So that answered my question with that. But yeah, now that Andrew is eligible for leading actor, we have nine candidates, which means we have five slots for leading actor in a musical. And that means in my humble opinion, we have Joshua Henry, Brandon Uranowitz, Luke Evans, Sam Tutti and Nicholas Christopher all kind of locked in in that category. If LJ gets in, I think it is at the removal of either Brandon or of Nick. The reason why I think Brandon is vulnerable is because he's already a winner. Whereas there's a narrative of Josh of like it's time. It's also, how many acting nominations do we think nominators are going to be willing to give Ragtime? It's, you know, are we really going to give it? I think Hamilton had seven. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Yeah, Hamilton had seven. And so it's like, is Ragtime really gonna go for six or seven? I don't think so. And so there are, especially when there are other people who could get in there and are worthy. I think that makes Brandon a little bit more vulnerable. And I think Nick is vulnerable just because I don't see Chess getting nominated for revival. And if it's not getting in for revival, there might be less of an incentive to nominate Nicholas. Whereas LJ will be part of a best musical nominee. He is the forefront. He's at the forefront of this musical. Whereas Nicholas is a co lead with Leah and with Aaron. So that's where I think LJ has an edge over Nicholas and over Brandon. But I still think that those two are getting in over lj. Just saying. I don't really see any of the other featured actors in the show getting in. You know, we love ourselves some Nolan. I just don't think the role is there. Benjamin does a solid job. I don't really think the role is there. So yeah, I think we're looking at musical score in terms of nominations. Musical score, book, orchestrations, set, lighting, costume, sound, direction. So that's nine already. Possibly choreography. That would be ten. Shoshana and David. So that would bring them up to 11, I think. Lost Boys, we're looking at maximum 12. Minimum nine. That's. Yeah. 12, 11. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Minimum, minimum seven. Maximum 12. That's where we're putting Lost Boys in terms of nominations. That's really all I can say right now on Lost Boys. I hope that covered a lot for you guys. I hope that seemed like a worthy review. I know a lot of you were really kind of like, waiting for this one. Both because it's the last show of the season. I know that the show has a major fan base already. I don't want to decry that. But I also had a lot of friends who saw this show in previews and texted me and were like, oh, my God, I want you to rip it to shreds. I hated it so much. I do not. I guess I understand the hatred because Lost Boys is so big and it's so earnest and it's very loud and it's very much setting a specific vibe, which is not going to be for everyone. Like, if you are somebody who's waiting for the next Frank Lesser musical, if you're somebody who went to go see Beaches and you're like, I really appreciated the tone of Beaches, I don't think Lost Boys is for you. But you also have to give credit to a team that wanted to make something in a very specific way. And I would say for like, the first 60% of the show, they really kind of do it. The last 40%, little bit less so. Which is unfortunate. But listen, I've seen far worse shows get nominated for best musical. I even think there are a few worst musicals that have won in the past. Whoopsie Daisy. For me, it's not something that I hate. It's not something that I'm obsessed with. I think after now having seen it the second time, I think I'm good. I don't think I'll be seeing it again for a long time unless I'm invited back for some reason, which I don't see happening. That's sort of where we leave Lost Boys. It is, I think, a formidable contender in Best musical and some of the other categories. It's very different from the other three potential nominees. But more importantly, I also just see this being a success. I did say famously on Casey Ball podcast, it's Broadway Bitch, available wherever you listen to podcasts that it identifies as a twink musical than as a vampire musical. And the twink musicals tend to do more well than the vampire musicals. So we'll see what happens with Lost Boys. But I feel it's gonna run for a bit. Maybe not like five years. It's a big, big show in a big, big theater. But listen, at the very least, I think it's making it to the end of the calendar year and possibly beyond. We'll see how it does with Tony's, but I think that's that it's building up quite a strong fan base and good for them. We don't begrudge any show that can fill the Palace Theater for over a year. It's a huge theater, beautiful theater. I love the new renovation, but big, big theater, hard to fill. That's it with Lost Boys. I want to thank you guys for listening to this episode again. If you like us, please give us a nice 5 star rating or review. Follow us on Discord or on Substack. Join all the Tony discussion onto the Discord. There's a whole lot of stuff being talked about there. Also, if you have questions about the podcast comments about the podcast, you can go there. People have making a lot of comments about most recent reviews. You can find us on YouTube as well. That's also growing. You can follow me on Instagram at macaplic Usual Spelling this coming Sunday is our next live show reviewing the 20252026 season at Green Room 42 with Ragtime's Nicholas Barone and Mamma Mia's Chelsea Williams. Also Friend of the Pod Chelsea Williams. If you can't make it to the May 3rd show, we have Monday, June 1st coming up after that, which is the slightly early Tony Awards show. Also green room 42 link for both will be in the description for this episode. We have one last pre nomination episode coming up. It's going to be a doozy. We've got interviews with Broadway Breakdown Friends and fam Casey Balsam from its Broadway Bitch theaterlease theater critic Juan Ramirez. We have dramas Connor and Dylan McDowell and we also have our Gold Derby friend Sam Ekman. In my opinion, the only expert at Gold Derby to listen to when it comes to theater. All coming on to give us some of their final hot takes before the nominations come out. That'll be this weekend before the live show and then we are doing our response to the nominations as soon as possible with spoiler alert the theater lovers Rachel and Will Anderson. So get ready for that. And that's it. Who should we close out with today? We've closed out with Shoshana a lot. I feel like it's a little silly to give her like a third or fourth closeout, but I don't know, maybe we close out with her and Paul doing Wild. I feel like there's a video of them doing it somewhere on like broadway.com or something. So yeah, let's close out with them singing Wild. That'll be nice. We've never actually had Nolan out here as a closer. So that's it. Yeah. We'll see you guys for the next episode. Take it away, you two. Bye. Wild again I want to be Wild again Wild again I want to be.