The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys drops a newly arrived family into a seaside town where the local teenagers never seem to age, never seem to sleep, and take a sudden interest in the older of two brothers. By the time the younger one works out what the boardwalk crowd actually are, his brother is already halfway to becoming one of them.

Their mother has moved the family to her father's house after a divorce, and the seafront offers exactly the kind of freedom a restless seventeen-year-old is looking for. He falls in with a charismatic pack who ride motorbikes and keep unusual hours; his younger brother falls in with two self-appointed vampire hunters who treat horror comics as field research. Comedy and horror run on the same track, and the family has to decide how far it will go for one of its own.

The score is by the band The Rescues, with a book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch, adapting the 1987 film of the same name. The stage version leans harder on music than the screen story did: here the vampires front a rock band, which turns their menace into performance and gives the show its sound.

Expect a loud, guitar-driven evening with a strong horror-comedy streak, full of smoke, flight and blood, and jokes about all three. Underneath the genre machinery is a story about a family putting itself back together after a rupture, and about the appeal of a gang that promises you will never have to grow up.

It is aimed at audiences who want their musicals with teeth and their horror with a laugh in it. It works best live, where a room flinching and cheering in the same moment does half the work for the cast.