“Schmigadoon!” and “The Lost Boys” Are Killer Revamps
The frothy, delectable “Schmigadoon!” is about a classic Upper West Side predicament: a love affair between two doctors, one who hates musicals and one who adores them. Josh is a skeptic who gets itchy whenever actors burst into song; Melissa is a believer who longs for a romance so transcendent that it can be expressed only in an airy glissando, opted up an octave. Three years into their relationship, they’ve hit a wall, because you can’t duet with somebody who won’t sing back.
And then, on a couples’ hiking trip, they stumble into a landscape that is Melissa’s fantasy and Josh’s worst nightmare, an idyllic village called Schmigadoon. A magical hamlet with cute gabled cottages and hand-painted mountains, it’s the setting for a gleeful mishmash of virtually every mid-century musical, including “Brigadoon” (from which the show draws its premise), “The Music Man,” “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “The King and I,” “South Pacific,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “The Sound of Music.” Villagers in sorbet-tinted outfits burst into “I want” numbers; the giddy ensemble seizes any excuse to kick up their Capezios. Josh is desperate to escape, but unfortunately, as a leprechaun informs him, he can’t do so without finding true love.
Will you, too, fall head over heels? I sure did. My response to entering Schmigadoon was, to be frank, not that different from Melissa’s: I’m an easy lay for a swoony ballad, I love a deep-cut golden-age callback, and I’m happiest when grinning lunatics in crinolines start grapevining around a gazebo. During the pandemic, I devoured the show’s source, the TV series “Schmigadoon!,” co-created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio; back then, Melissas like me were so thirsty to experience something resembling live theatre that we lurked on TikTok, watching stars on hiatus lose their minds in Hell’s Kitchen sublets. (Anyone who saw Ben Platt singing “Part of Your World” in a ketchup-red wig, using a fork as a trident, knows what I’m talking about.)
Season 1 of the TV show was aimed at such diehards; the second season, “Schmicago,” a pastiche of sexy, cynical musicals from the seventies, including “Pippin” and “Cabaret,” felt broader in its appeal and, artistically, like a kick step up—and I hope that its creators turn that season into a Broadway show, too. But Paul’s loyal adaptation of the début season clicks beautifully onstage, because “Schmigadoon!” is now exactly what it pretended to be: a live Broadway romp, all escapist virtuosity and (you gotta have) heart.
The first sign of the show’s commitment to the bit is the third song, a delirious hoedown called “Corn Puddin’,” a parody of inane but delightful vintage numbers such as “Real Nice Clambake,” “Shipoopi,” and the demented “Turkey Lurkey Time.” Josh rolls his eyes, repulsed by the elbows-out hoofing; Melissa goes native, twangily improvising a verse asking for an “extry” helping. Soon, the two leads are flirting (and cavorting) with new true-love prospects, in smartly crafted songs that are peppered with meta touches. “Effortless, effortless! This is so effing effortless,” Melissa croons in “Enjoy the Ride,” as she banters with a Billy Bigelow-ish carnival barker. “I wanna taste the things I’ve never tasted. / Man, your pants are really high-waisted.” A rowdy riff on “Ya Got Trouble!,” from “The Music Man,” escalates, alarmingly, into warnings about “Cows and sheep having amorous congress!” An airy ballad called “Suddenly” beautifully captures the irrational yet irresistible romance that pulses through the genre: “There’s no sense in trying to explain it. / What and where and why and when and how. / All I know is suddenly I love you / and, suddenly, that’s all that matters now.”
“Schmigadoon!” is at its funniest when it tweaks the tradition’s sillier motifs, such as a crowd of children nonsensically bursting into laughter at the end of a song. But the show isn’t a finger-wagging critique, let alone an edgy deconstruction—it’s mostly an opportunity for the creators to poke gentle fun at the classics while tapping into the sparkling well they sprang from. If you’re in a picky mood, you could find flaws: Act I ends with the kind of soft cliffhanger that makes more sense in TV. But who cares? The book’s shambolic rhythms pay off, as pressure slowly builds on Josh to join in instead of judging. And, God, the dancing is good: skilled, energetic, joyful.
The cast is excellent, particularly Isabelle McCalla as a spunky teacher, Brad Oscar as a closeted mayor, and Max Clayton as that tight-panted carnival barker. Alex Brightman, who was such a devilish extrovert in “Beetlejuice,” plays Josh with likable restraint, which makes his inevitable solo feel as meaningful as a longed-for kiss.
Still, the standout is a performer in a minor role: McKenzie Kurtz, who was the thrilling wild card in the otherwise disappointing recent revival of “Heathers,” in which she found wiggly layers in the bitch queen Heather Chandler. As the Ado Annie-like Betsy, a horny teen-ager whose father owns a shotgun, Kurtz is playing a character who should be, and kind of is, a one-joke punch line. She pulls off her big song, “Not That Kind of Gal,” gloriously, channelling the mid-century musical’s warped blend of libido and innocence. But it’s Kurtz’s physical performance, especially her gleaming rictus of a grin—jaw dropped nearly to her collarbone, eyes popped as wide as sunflowers—that becomes a symbol of the show’s wholesome appeal, which is all about being a little bit extry. In the safe space that is “Schmigadoon!,” there’s no such thing as cringe.
The equally larger-than-life musical “The Lost Boys” opens with a mysterious bang, and then with a staticky black-and-white date displayed high above the stage: “1987,” shuddering like a threat. Over loudspeakers, we hear the syrupy voice of President Ronald Reagan, droning on about family values. Finally, we see a flashlight—a cop is moving through the inky darkness of an industrial space, unwitting prey for the undead.
From then on, “The Lost Boys” never stops moving, managing to be at once kinetic and poetic, earnestly emotional and rock-and-roll bombastic, a remarkably sincere vampire story produced with such attention to detail that you might forgive the fact that the music is pretty weak. Camp has become the go-to aesthetic for new musicals, in fabulous recent spectacles such as “Death Becomes Her,” “The Rocky Horror Show,” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” and in entertaining but lesser offerings such as “Titaníque” and “Chess.” “The Lost Boys,” which is based on a cult-classic vampire flick with a giggly homoerotic subtext, could easily have chosen that path, placing the audience at an ironic distance from its cheesy source, which is now notable mainly for a GIF of a well-oiled, shirtless saxophone player. It’s comparatively risk-free I.P.: easy to mock, hard to defend on purist grounds.
This makes it all the more impressive that the creators have taken such a big swing, by shifting the material in the opposite direction: like the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” they swap camp for mythology. It’s not that the writers, David Hornsby and Chris Koch, or the director, Michael Arden, ignore the movie’s goofiness; that oily saxophonist struts onstage early, to huge laughs. But they’ve given the story a much darker edge, and also a strong political through line about a single-parent family resisting Reagan-era shame. Best of all, the central characters, the single mom Lucy and her sons, Michael and Sam, have a legitimate thematic arc: they’ve fled cross-country to California to escape an abusive, alcoholic father, which makes their behavior cohere, particularly in the case of the moody, tormented Michael (L. J. Benet), who is both attracted to violent monsters and fearful of becoming one. The erotic implications of vampiric temptation—and of glam-rock front men who generously offer to pierce an ear under the boardwalk—remain. But they’re balanced by a plot about the nerdy younger brother, Sam (an appealing Benjamin Pajak), coming out, complete with a corny, unabashed queer-hero solo. The moment should fall flat, but in a musical unafraid to be blunt, and in the context of today’s eighties-style homophobia, it kills.
The show’s biggest weakness is its music—and normally that would be enough to sour me on any musical. The songs, by the indie band the Rescues, are dominated by gluey ballads and hollow thrash numbers, full of on-the-nose lyrics such as “I have to have you.” This poses a particular problem when it comes to Star, Michael’s love interest, whose songs are frustratingly limp. So why does “The Lost Boys” feel so exhilarating, even without the ingredient that makes a musical a musical? Mainly, because it’s such a sharp, propulsive production in every other way. The dazzlingly engineered set, by Dane Laffrey, is refreshingly handcrafted after years of Broadway shows being dominated by screens. The dedicated cast never condescends. It’s all enough to make a dopey song feel like a jam.
Everything is framed by the set’s colossal, shadowy industrial space, dense with ladders and catwalks—the better for vampires to lurk. But the stage keeps seamlessly shifting, transforming into a realistic, cluttered two-story house; a grimy boardwalk lit by neon; a slinky, skunky vampires’ lair; the bright interior of a video store; a spooky bridge; and an abandoned playground, complete with a rusty pelican on a spring. The titular vampire gang has formed a band, and when its members start to shred, the stage sinks down to create a mosh pit—a hellish underworld into which victims later drop.
By the final showdown, the production has made use of every bit of stage space, with sensational flying sequences (choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant) that allow the vampires to float, hover, and—in one especially intense moment—dive from that bridge. “The Lost Boys” has a staggering budget, and you feel every cent of it onstage: there’s even an eerie “button” scene after the curtain call, like a post-credits teaser. Instead of feeling self-indulgent, the show makes its enormity a strength—embracing every chance to underline its points and then scrawl “How true!” in the margins. Does that sound like overkill? Perhaps, but it’s a blast.
Even so, my favorite number was the smallest: “Wild,” sung by Shoshana Bean, who plays Lucy with quiet warmth. In that derelict playground, Lucy reminisces about her hippie youth, then spins in joyful abandon on a rusty carrousel. Amid the clamor of the show’s anthems, “Wild” is a sweet respite. It’s an homage to the fearlessness of adolescence, when every risk feels worth taking, whatever the cost. ♦