We know. You can’t have a post-credits scene for a Broadway show, because they don’t have credits — they have curtain calls. But what else are we to call it when, after the cast of the 12-time Tony–nominated The Lost Boys: A New Musical takes to the stage for their curtain call, the lights drop for one more scene?
“We call it a tag,” The Lost Boys director/co-lighting designer Michael Arden told Mashable in an interview over Zoom. “But it is a post-credit[s] scene.”
The two-time Tony–winning director is up for Best Director of a Musical and —alongside Jen Schriever — Best Lighting Design of a Musical this Sunday at the 79th Annual Tony Awards. So, as Mashable’s Entertainment Editor, I sat down to delve into how Arden and company adapted Joel Schumacher’s 1987 cult classic into a Broadway musical that has critics (this one included) raving. We talked about the changes from the movie, the expanded queer representation, and, of course, flying vampires.
Then, I had to ask about the scene that urges audiences to leave not on the high of a cheery curtain call, but on the dizzying surprise of what comes after.
What happens in The Lost Boys: A New Musical’s post-credits scene?
LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Brian Flores, Dean Maupin, and Sean Grandillo fly in “The Lost Boys: A New Musical.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
The lights rise to reveal the old ironworks at Coronado Bluff, the abandoned factory that the vampire David and his lost boys call home. But with them all staked and gone, who could possibly be poking around this place of death and decay?
It’s Mrs. Vasquez, the unwittingly widowed wife of Officer Vasquez, the cop who bit it in the show’s opening. Over the course of the play, Mrs. Vasquez entreats the people of Santa Clara to help her find her missing husband, offering flyers with his picture on them to billboards and passersby, including new-to-town mom Lucy Emerson.
At the end of the show, it seems her amateur sleuthing has brought her to the last place her husband let out a breath. She finds his police cap on a table, and groans. Then, she sees a bottle.
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It’s the bottle that contains David’s blood, introduced when he tempted Michael to drink. As the orchestra music plays a dark theme, Mrs. Vasquez seems irresistibly drawn to the bottle, drawn to drink. As she lifts the bottle to her lips, the curtain falls, leaving her future and that of Santa Clara uncertain.
Arden said of this scene, “Ashley Jenkins, who plays Mrs. Vasquez, is an actor I’ve worked with a bunch of times. So the fact that she gets to end the show, and that we get that the next Big Bad bad-ass vampire might be like a fierce Black woman? I’m obsessed with [it].”
Why does The Lost Boys: A New Musical’s have a post-credits scene?
Ali Louis Bourzgui hovers over LJ Benet in “The Lost Boys: A New Musical.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
For Arden, it’s all about keeping true to the genre of the original film. Arden explained, “The cold open of our show is a character we never meet again that’s killed. That is such a horror-specific trope. And I was like, ‘Well, it feels like it wants that bookend, wouldn’t it be crazy? Do you think we could ever?’ And so I wrote a version of it, and put it on the last page of the script. And everyone was like, ‘Ha, ha, ha! Wait, could we really do that?’ And I was like, ‘Why not? We make up the rules, baby!'”
This reporter noted I couldn’t think of any other theatrical production with a “tag,” and Arden responded, “I don’t think there are any. I think this might be the first.”
But what does it mean?
Will The Lost Boys: A New Musical get a sequel?
Maria Wirries and LJ Benet play Star and Michael in “The Lost Boys: A New Musical.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Schumacher’s The Lost Boys got two. Twenty-one years after the first film, Lost Boys: The Tribe was released, starring Kiefer Sutherland’s half-brother Angus as the surfer-bro vampire Shane. Two years later, Lost Boys: The Thirst debuted, with Corey Feldman stepping up from supporting player to protagonist, reprising the role of Edgar Frog.
So, could The Lost Boys: A New Musical be expanded into a sequel? Sure, it’s rare for a musical to get a sequel. But so are post-credits scenes in theatre. And what is a post-credits scene if not a teaser for more?
Asked about the possibility, Arden took a pregnant pause, and then said, “Not at the moment. We all need a good rest.”
The Lost Boys: A New Musical is now on Broadway.
