Author: rb809rb

“Turning a movie into a musical reeks of desperation,” says a character in the new Broadway musical adaptation of the 1987 film “The Lost Boys.”

That insider wink to the audience gets a big laugh — and truer words were never spoken. But this stunner of a show, based on the Joel Schumacher film, is a solid theatrical transformation, rich in imagination, humor and heart — and with spectacular special effects.

It should also break the curse of flop Broadway musicals about vampires, following the bloodletting of 2002’s “Dance of the Vampires” (music by Jim Steinman), 2004’s “Dracula: The Musical” (music by Frank Wildhorn), and 2006’s “Lestat” (music by Elton John). Or at least it has an “Outsiders” chance, what with that 2024 hit musical showing a box office pathway by tapping into the evergreen potential of adolescent angst and pluck. After all, stranger things have happened and the teen strategy certainly worked for the “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” “The Vampire Diaries,” and “Twilight” franchises.

Director Michael Arden (Tony awards for “Parade” and “Maybe Happy Ending”) returns in top form here (let’s call “Queen of Versailles” an outlier) in an epic-yet-elegant production that lives up to the MTV-stylish film that became a Gen X favorite.

Because of the size and scale of the musical production (reportedly in the $25 million-plus range), the show nixed an out-of-town run. While “The Lost Boys” could have benefitted from more work — particularly in the troublesome second act — the production should still satisfy longtime fans and be an attractive sell for a younger market.

Co-writers David Hornsby (TV’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Chris Hoch improve the screenplay, tightening the original storyline, cutting some characters, upping the funny and giving the show more warmth.

The story again centers on just-divorced mom Lucy Emerson (Shoshana Bean, terrific) and her two teenage sons — sullen Michael, 17 and nerdy Sam, 14. They’re seeking a fresh start by relocating to a California coastal town where dozens of its residents are mysteriously disappearing. (What is even more strange is that the outbreak of missing persons hasn’t caused a town panic, or made national headlines.)

Feeling restless and reckless, Michael (LJ Benet) is drawn to a hard-rocking local band that is secretly a quartet of young vampires that is literally sucking the life out of the community. The leader of the pack is charismatic David (Ali Louis Bourzgui), played by Keifer Sutherland in the film. Wanting to be break free from his family and with the added seduction of Star (Maria Wirries), Michael is peer-pressured into drinking from a bottle whose contents turns him into a half-vampire. His graduation as a full member of this blood brotherhood awaits after his first kill.

On discovering his brother’s nocturnal transitioning — “Don’t tell mom!” begs Michael — Sam (Benjamin Pajak), played by Corey Haim in the film, teams up with the Frog Brothers (Jennifer Duka and Miguel Gil), a pair of fellow comic book fanatics and self-styled vampire hunters, to try to save Michael before his first everlasting bite.

Families — lost and found — are at the heart of the show as is the young’s desperate need to belong —whether it’s in a gang, band, club or coven (or in Lucy’s day, a communal hippie life). Add teen rebellion, father issues, parental abuse, rites of passage and the allure of immortality and you have some potent subjects to deal with, even if they don’t always fit comfortably with the show’s shifting tones.

Benet (Disney Channel’s “Dog with a Blog”) taps into Michael’s adolescent vulnerability and handles his big numbers assuredly. Bourzgui, smashing in the title role in “The Who’s Tommy,” brings mystery, a cool swagger and menace to the role, as well as a dash of homoeroticism. (The scene where he intimately teaches Michael to play the guitar is swoon-worthy.) Paul Alexander Nolan has charm, smarm and danger as Max, the video store owner, who has duplicitous sights on the Emerson family.

As Sam, Benjamin Pajak, who played Winthrop in “The Music Man” and the title role in Encore!’s “Oliver!”, nicely segues his talent to teen-hood as a “nervous dweeb” who has an eye for fashionable footwear and a boy crush on Rob Lowe. Sam’s coming-of-age arc, where he discovers queerness is his superpower, is one of the fresher elements in the adaptation.

But the broad comedy of that role — and especially that of the Frog Brothers — sometimes imbalances the show’s tone as the musical struggles with the conflicting demands of humor, horror and sentiment.

The L.A. indie-rock group The Rescues gives the show its drive and does well musicalizing its more intimate, playful and personal moments. It also manages to evoke the ‘80s sound while still feeling contemporary — and the choral harmonies are lovely, too. The show’s ‘80s atmosphere is brat packed with Ryan Park’s new wave costumes and David Brian Brown’s hair and wig designs — dig those mullets, Mohawks and ‘highlighted pompadours. There’s even hat tip to the film with a cameo by “the sweaty sax guy.”

The spectacular lighting (Jen Schriever and Arden) and sound design (Adam Fisher) create a world of foreboding and creepiness. Dane Lafrey’s magnificent, multi-level design makes maximum use of the Palace’s cavernous stage to create a lair to die for.

It’s also a grand space for mesmerizing aerial work, staged by Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland. Those exquisite night flights bring to mind another bunch of Neverlanders longing for home. In “The Lost Boys” at least one of them makes it back.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from “The Ballad of Paladin,” Season 3, Episode 3 of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.

One of the defining loose threads of “Euphoria” has been settled — in moving and compelling fashion.

The action of the first season of “Euphoria” back in 2019 kicks off with a crime. Jules Vaughn, the new girl in her high school, solicits sex from older men; Cal Jacobs, a seemingly upstanding member of the community, commits an act of statutory rape. The act is captured on a tape that haunted the show through its first two seasons — as evidence of Cal’s unfaithfulness and of a queer identity he can barely admit to himself, and as a potential catalyst for his fall from grace.

All of this has been compellingly acted, through the show’s run, by Eric Dane and by Hunter Schafer. The latter actor seemed at times in Season 2 to recede from view, and her return, this season, has been welcome; the former seemed like an unlikely addition to this season at all. Dane, who died in February, announced his ALS diagnosis in 2025. 

The season’s third episode, “The Ballad of Paladin,” isn’t Dane’s first appearance on the season; he’d shown up briefly the week before. But it’s striking and strong work from an actor working under unimaginable circumstances — and, crucially, the role as written never condescends to Dane. Cal, here, is attending the wedding of a son he loathes and who loathes him; he’s doing so under a cloud of shame, with his depredations (although not his liaison with Jules) having been exposed. “Most of you know me,” he says in his toast. “Some have probably heard about me. That’s the past.” Throughout the series, and particularly in a knockout showcase episode in Season 2, Cal has lived in a sort of fantasy double life, believing that he can outrun his desire if he simply wills it hard enough. Dane imbues his declaration that he’s left foolish things behind with far more evident emotion than his tribute to his son, a painful check-in on a relationship played by actors committed to honesty.

And encountering Jules at the wedding’s open bar, Cal is untrammeled and free. “How could I forget?” he declares to Jules. “It’s not every day you fuck one of your son’s high school classmates.” (Jules, with some measure of annoyance, reminds Cal that he recorded it, too, for which he offers a feeble apology, before making a lewd declaration about what he’d used the tape for.) It emerges in conversation that Cal was eventually arrested for a different statutory rape case and is a registered sex offender, to which Jules, in a moment of mordant humor, declares “So, like, you’re one of those red dots?”

The whole conversation is in this vein. As a low-key oasis in the midst of a high-drama wedding (with some of Sydney Sweeney’s most potentially viral acting of the season so far), it’s written with clear eyes about the person Cal is, but a refreshing lack of judgment. If anything, both Jules and “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson seem sympathetic to Cal’s inability to understand himself, and his need to constantly make excuses. “I do wish people didn’t think I was a pedo,” Cal tells Jules, who reminds him that he has a taste for the young. “But legal!” he declares. To his final moments on the show, it seems, Cal will exist at a state of remove from whatever it is that he wants, and in a haze of fading charm. (He flirts with Jules, and it seems the intention is not to pick her up but merely to exercise a too-little-used muscle; flirting is what Cal did and does.) 

A show taking yearslong gaps between seasons provides all the more opportunity to assess the passage of time, and, this season, “Euphoria” has made that passage its explicit subject: All of the characters, five years in show time removed from where we last saw them, are older, though not all of them have grown up. Gratifyingly, Jules has, and it’s an act of generosity of Levinson’s writing and of Dane’s acting that this conversation shows us how. Informed by Cal that high school represents the best part of one’s life — a period of freedom and possibility that Cal’s entire psychic life is constructed around chasing — Jules replies, with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, “I couldn’t disagree more.” She went through hell at Euphoria High in no small part due to Cal’s tape, and, while her adult life as a “sugar baby” sex worker might not look like what Jules fans would have wanted for her, she’s at least in control of her sexuality, confident in herself and existing in a surprising state of forgiveness. What a contrast to Cal’s grasping for a lost youth he misremembers as happy; what a place to have arrived at, as Schafer strides through the frame with a confidence the old Jules might only have imagined.

Dane’s work here is moving not merely for the frankness with which he confronts Cal’s flaws but for his own no-drama approach to work, which he evinced when I spoke to him some months after he made his diagnosis public. Then, Dane respectfully declined to discuss his health; noting that he was in the midst of shooting “Euphoria,” Dane said, “I am ready and willing to do just about anything.” His voice, during the show’s third season, is tremulous, but his bearing is steady. And his rant about how youth is beautiful and age is repulsive has behind it both a real comic idea and a crystalline sense of a character who cannot be shaken into changing. Jules’ response to that rant, that age brings “perspective,” falls upon unhearing ears. But the perspective the real Dane brought to one of “Euphoria”’s most complicated characters was among the show’s secret weapons — and his appearance made clear just how sorely he’ll be missed.

Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving founding member of the early 1960s-era girl group and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Ronettes, has died, according to a post on the group’s Facebook page. No cause of death was announced; she was 80 years old.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Nedra Talley Ross’ passing. She was a light to those who knew and loved her,” the post reads. “As a founding member of The Ronettes, along with her beloved cousins Ronnie and Estelle, Nedra’s voice, style and spirit helped define a sound that would change music. Her contribution to the group’s story and their defining influence will live forever.

“Rest peacefully dear Nedra. Thanks for the magic.”

In many ways, the Ronettes — New Yorkers Talley Ross (pictured above, far right, in 1964) and her cousins Veronica “Ronnie” Bennett (later Spector) and Estelle Bennett — were the definitive girl group, and they were certainly the definitive purveyors of producer Phil Spector’s legendary “Wall of Sound,” which dominated American radio in the early 1960s before the advent of the Beatles and the British Invasion.

With a bad-girl vibe and big, booming singles like “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You,” “Walking in the Rain” and “I Can Hear Music,” defined by lead singer Ronnie’s come-hither voice and Spector’s dense, echo-drenched production, the Ronettes’ sound is a time capsule of the Kennedy age. Although the group’s reign was brief, they cast a wide influence across the sound of the ‘60s and every pop era that followed — within a decade artists ranging from the New York Dolls and Bruce Springsteen to Billy Joel and the Ramones would be singing their praises and citing their influence.

Just as significantly, the group broke down racial barriers in the 1960s, when the sight of three young women of Puerto Rican and Black descent singing pop music on television and opening concerts for the Beatles was a rarity.

Talley Ross was born in Manhattan on Jan. 27, 1946, of Black, Native American, Irish and Puerto Rican descent, and began singing with her cousins as a child. They played New York sock hops and bar mitzvahs, performing material by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers and the Shirelles, first as Ronnie and the Relatives and then, at Beatrice Bennett’s suggestion, as the Ronettes. The trio was signed to Colpix Records, the label subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, in 1961, but their Stu Phillips-produced singles flopped.

In 1963, the Bennett sisters – now working as dancers and sometime vocalists with the Peppermint Lounge twist act Joey Dee & the Starlighters — cold-called the New York office of Phil Spector, then riding high with a run of hit singles by the Crystals, Bobb B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans and Darlene Love.

Granted an audition with Spector, the Ronettes, fronted by Ronnie, launched into a version of Frankie Lymon’s “Why Do Fools Fall In Love.” According to her autobiography, Spector instantly leaped up from his piano and exclaimed, “That’s the voice I’ve been looking for!”

With Ronnie in the lead — as well as the object of the producer’s romantic attentions — the group swiftly became the medium for Spector’s vast Wagnerian productions. The Ronettes detonated on the charts in ’63 with the explosive “Be My Baby,” which vaulted to No. 2 nationally; the song was later used unforgettably under the credits of Martin Scorsese’s 1973 breakthrough feature “Mean Streets.” The group also performed three songs on Spector’s Yuletide album “A Christmas Gift to You” that year, which has gone on to become a seasonal classic although its initial impact was dulled by the Kennedy assassination.

A quartet of masterful top 40 hits followed in 1964: “Baby I Love You,” “(The Best Part of) Breaking Up,” “Do I Love You” and “Walking in the Rain,” written by the pop powerhouse teams of Ellie Greenwich with Jeff Barry and Barry Mann with Cynthia Weil (and a dotted-line credit to Spector). On the back of these successes, the Ronettes toured the U.K., where the Rolling Stones served as their opening act — Keith Richards enthused, “They’re all right little darlings” — and Ronnie deflected advances from the Beatles’ John Lennon.

Two minor singles were released in 1965, while such magnificent performances as “Paradise” and “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine” remained in the can for more than a decade. The group also opened for the Beatles on their last world tour in 1966, alongside their last chart single, “I Can Hear Music” reached No. 100 in 1966.

The group agreed to split after a 1967 European tour: While the members were still in their early or mid-twenties, their peak era had long since passed, and by that time Phil Spector had divorced his wife and turned his domineering and literally combative attention to Ronnie, effectively squelching her professional career in the process.

A long series of bitter legal actions against Spector over unpaid royalties and income ensued over the following decades, with a judge finally ordering the producer to pay the group $2.6 million in 2000 (he appealed twice). As a member of the Rock Hall of Fame’s Board of Governors, he effectively blocked their nomination for years, although the group was finally inducted (and introduced by Richards) in 2007, after Spector had been arrested and convicted of the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson.

Talley-Ross continued to work as a solo artist, recording a solo contemporary Christian music album in 1978, in addition to several singles. Estelle Bennett and Ronnie Spector died in 2009 and 2022, respectively.