The Lost Boys Live!

What’s the deal with today’s vampires, huh? In my day, creatures of the night didn’t sparkle, and they certainly weren’t conduits for the virginal desires of hormonal teenage girls. No, the vampires I grew up with hung out in caves, eating Chinese takeout and listening to the Doors. The Lost Boys—Joel Schumacher’s 1987 horror flick about a gang of stylishly mulleted bloodsuckers tormenting Jason Patric and the two Coreys—was a generational touchstone for kids like myself, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of Portland sketch comedians snark all over my childhood. But the folks at Bad Reputation Productions must’ve also spent their formative years obsessing over the movie, because their live stage adaptation is as much a riotously fun homage as it is a gentle mockery. Injecting self-conscious meta-humor into the original screenplay, writers Shelley McLendon and Courtenay Hameister mostly take jabs at the film’s overwhelming Eighties-ness, but the real laughs come from the cast biting down hard on the movie’s hammiest lines. In particular, Tynan DeLong captures the slack-jawed innocence—and vomitous Technicolor wardrobe—of young Corey Haim, and Michael Fetters slips comfortably into Kiefer Sutherland’s great, douchey sneer. The production is remarkably resourceful, utilizing projected comic-book panels, Razor scooters and roller skates, and never feels limited by the tiny theater at the Ethos Music Center. If you’ve never seen the movie, the play is probably a bit insider-y at times. But, hey, if you didn’t watch The Lost Boys every weekend from the ages of 8 to 13 like some of us, that’s your problem.

Where: Ethos/IFCC
Address: 5340 N Interstate Ave.
Website: badreputationprods.com