When LJ Benet got a call from his agent after auditioning for the lead role in Broadway‘s musical adaptation of the 1987 cult film The Lost Boys, he was expecting a gentle letdown. “Honestly, at this point at my career, I had just moved back in with my parents, I’m working as a handyman but also doing regional theater in Los Angeles. I’m thinking, ‘How do I pay my bills?’” he tells Billboard. “In my head, I was walking [into the audition thinking], ‘Dang, Broadway, that’d be sick one day.’” But for Benet, “one day” was that very day. “When they told me I got it, I had a breakdown in my cousin’s studio.”

Like one of the motorcycle-revving, high-flying vampires in The Lost Boys, his career was about to take off. And he had the algorithm gods to thank. “He came up on Instagram,” explains Tony winner Michael Arden, the director and co-lighting designer of Lost Boys, to Billboard. “I don’t know if I got randomly algorithm [connected] to his singing” — he notes they had mutuals from their involvement in an ongoing stage musical series called For the Record — “but I heard his voice and I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, this is a singular voice.’ It was what we were looking for and unable to find.”

Benet, who was working Taskrabbit gigs at the time, knew none of this — nor was he aware that after doing a panto with Lythgoe Productions, producer Becky Lythgoe was simultaneously stumping for him to get a Lost Boys audition behind the scenes. “All of these stars were intertwining,” he marvels, still looking amazed.

“He flew in on our final day of auditions,” Arden recalls. “This was a room of like 20 people who had to sign off on this, from Warner Bros. to the book writers, composers, casting producers, you name it. I’ve never done this in my career in casting, but I said, ‘Everyone close your eyes. These are our people. Raise your hand for the person you think should be Michael.’ Every single person raised their hand for LJ.”

Benet wasn’t the only newcomer that Arden went to bat for while planning this vampiric musical. While most big-budget productions tap musical theater veterans or hitmaking pop stars for tunes, The Lost Boys handed the honors over to The Rescues, a Los Angeles band with no chart presence or viral hits — but one very important fan.

“They were the perfect fit,” says Arden of the indie band who had captured his imagination for years. “Dramatic, theatrical, sweeping — and their vocal arrangements were so exciting. The producers had a list of more known quantities on their short list, but I said, ‘Listen, no one writes better tunes that I think are more right [for Lost Boys] than this band called The Rescues.’ Luckily, they happened to be playing a show that night.”

After catching The Rescues rock out at Hotel Café in Los Angeles, the producers offered the trio the gig on the spot. Their response, per Arden: “Absolutely, yes, we love vampires.”

Even then, The Lost Boys was far from taking flight. It’s one thing to write great songs — or as Arden calls it, “a beautiful and badass score,” which has earned the Rescues’ their first Tony nomination — but it’s another to put them in a Broadway show and make it work. Particularly one that involves flying vampires, people jumping off a bridge, motorcycle racing and multilevel, immersive staging.

“We went through curveballs that no one could see coming. Not even artistic curveballs,” says Arden, who could potentially win his third Tony this year for directing The Lost Boys (he previously won for Maybe Happy Ending and Parade). Surreptitiously harnessing up actors before they took flight, for example, necessitated last-minute changes to The Rescues’ songs. “It went through so many rewrites because the scenery couldn’t move fast enough to get things done.”

“The Rescues were brand-new to this, and so their music was just a true labor of love — they had no jadedness,” Lost Boys co-star and Broadway veteran Ali Louis Bourzgui (Hadestown, The Who’s Tommy) told Billboard‘s Rebecca Milzoff in a separate interview.

“One thing I really appreciate about the Rescues is like they really care about the story that’s being told behind the music,” Benet says. Like the Rescues, Benet says the biggest learning curve he faced was less creative and more technical. “I did not realize how physical this thing was going to be,” he sighs. “Not even the flying, but just running around the stairs, the fight sequences, the motorcycles. I am sweating buckets at the end of the first act, because it feels like a marathon. The second half of the second act is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, because I don’t leave the stage for much more than 10 seconds at any period of time.”

The results, both auditory and visual, show none of that preproduction and backstage strain. And a lot of that has to do with the Rescues’ Tony-nominated best original score (The Lost Boys Original Broadway Cast Recording drops July 24), which imbues the production with a Gothy grace and California cool that mask the behind-the-scenes technical wizardry.

“The last song [The Rescues] wrote was ‘Now Forever,’ which I think is gonna go down in the musical theater pantheon of great love duets,” Arden says of the duet which pairs Benet with Maria Wirries, who plays troubled love interest Star. “Honestly, anything I sing with Maria, it really takes me out of the show and just into the moment,” says Benet. “I just love her. I can’t help but fall for her every time.”

Benet’s favorite song in the musical, however, is arguably more of a showcase for Tony-nominated co-star Bourzgui, who portrays vampire gang leader David. “I don’t really sing much in that part, but I love the duet that David and Michael have in the second act. It’s really Ali’s song, to be honest, the ‘Belong to Someone (Reprise).’ I don’t get to sing with Ali as much in the show except for that one, so I love singing with him there.”

“Belong to Someone” is a poignant power ballad that cuts to the core of the musical — a desire to be loved and accepted, something Michael seeks from Star and David as his broken biological family struggles to pull itself back together. Michael’s journey is one of going through the darkness—in the case of Lost Boys, quite literally — to find the light. And for Benet, this role is a bit of art imitating life.

In 2025, prior to his Broadway debut, Benet—a singer-songwriter in his own right—released a harrowing, haunted folk-rock lament called “Warm.” The song unfolds like a self-loathing diary entry, building from a gruff whisper to a pained but phenomenal showcase for his remarkable range, depth and authenticity. While Benet admits to chasing some TikTok trends on previous songs, “Warm” found him looking inside for inspiration, whether he liked it or not.

“I went through a really difficult time. In ‘Warm,’ I finally had to be honest about what had happened to me,” Benet says. “My team was like, ‘This is the best stuff we’ve heard in a really long time from you.’ It was because I was finally just writing down what was killing me on the inside. I was being honest about a lot of dark things I was feeling that you never want to put out in the world,” he admits. “It taught me a really valuable lesson: I’m not the only person going through these things.”

In a way, Benet’s personal journey foreshadowed the one he would bring to life eight times a week at Broadway’s Palace Theatre in The Lost Boys. As Michael, he’s forced to confront the demons in his life, and eventually he — and his family — come out stronger for it.

Aside from The Lost Boys’ chiaroscuro stage spectacle and seductive songs, at its core is the story of a family reconnecting. That’s part of what’s helped it get rave reviews from O.G. movie fans, fresh-faced audiences and critics. Going into the 2026 Tony Awards, The Lost Boys is up for 12 awards, tying with Schmigadoon! for the most noms this year.

“I remember I watched Neil Patrick Harris open the Tonys years ago when I was a kid,” says Benet, shaking his head. “I was like, ‘Man, that’d be cool one day to be there.’ And now all of a sudden, I am. It’s just kind of insane.”

“For me personally, growing up as a little theater-obsessed kid in Midland, Texas, the Tony Awards was the sole conduit, besides cast albums, to Broadway,” says Arden. “Of course we want to win, because that means hopefully more people will see our show and we get to employ our company for longer. But more than anything, it’s just an incredible celebration of what I think is the most spectacular art form we have that has the most possibility to touch and inspire and challenge its participants…. The play inspires belief in something, and if you can believe in something, then there’s hope.”

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