Behind the Buzz About Dane Laffrey’s Award-Winning Scenic Design for The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys, the new Broadway musical based on the 80s cult film about teenage vampires, scored twelve 2026 Tony nominations – including for Best Musical -- and four wins. Scenic designer Dane Laffrey nabbed one of those statuettes for a creative vision that has drawn acclaim for its scale, technical complexity and service to the story. Helen Shaw of The New York Times gushed that his 65-foot-tall, three-story set “is the finest spectacle I’ve seen this season outside of the Met Opera.”

This is Laffrey’s seventh Broadway collaboration with director Michael Arden. Those credits include hits like Maybe Happy Ending (2025 Tony Award winner for Best Musical) and Parade (2023 Tony Award winner for Best Musical Revival). PRG is proud to be a longstanding partner to these creative luminaries and to provide scenic fabrication and automation services for The Lost Boys.

The newly renovated Palace Theatre provides the ideal canvas for this project. Its restoration famously involved lifting the auditorium approximately 30 feet, creating vertical space that allows entire scenic units to disappear above and below the stage deck. The theatre’s tall proscenium opening also enhances the production’s flying effects, enabling higher lifts and more intricate aerial choreography.

The story zips across wide-ranging locations: the family home, a store, a boardwalk with playground, a billboard that becomes a rock-concert stage. As Laffrey explains, “the challenge of this show was figuring out how to hold all of those quite divergent visual ideas into one container.” PRG artistry, engineering, technology and passion for the project was key in meeting this challenge.

Laffrey opted for a design that is tactile, gritty and physical versus digitized. He says, “The Lost Boys is fully analog. It’s all rendered by scenic artists, engineers, and artisans.” PRG’s scenic fabrication team in New Windsor, New York, filled this central role.

To realize Laffrey’s vision of industrial decline and disaffected youth, they employed specialized materials and finishing techniques, including a heavy reliance on carved foam, which enables the rapid fabrication of large-scale forms and detailed textures. Once carved, the foam is coated with a durable hard-shell finish that allows it to be treated like a traditional scenic surface, supporting layers of paint, glazes and distressing techniques that simulate years of wear and environmental exposure.

The production also made extensive use of 3D printing, a transformative technology in scenic fabrication. Mark Peterson, PRG’s GM of Sales and Business Development, says, “It significantly reduced both costs and production time, turning weeks of traditional casting into just days. For The Lost Boys, our shop produced more than 700 unique rail fittings inspired by late-19th-century steel mill components."

The speed and precision of transitions between scenes contribute to the show’s sense of otherworldliness. As a Fast Company reporter observed, “You may find yourself anxiously holding your breath as you wait to see if everyone lands on cue, and fortunately, Laffrey’s Rubik’s Cube-like set pieces always slide into their proper place at just the right time.”

One notable example comes from a working freight elevator that suddenly drops four floors and transports audiences deep underground to the vampires’ post-industrial lair. The effect enhances the show’s strong verticality and creates the sense that players appear almost instantaneously in multiple locations.

Peterson says, “Dane utilizes every tool at his disposal to create seamless scene changes. This production is essentially a large-scale puzzle, and his proficiency in employing every inch of the theatre is remarkable.”

The Lost Boys is currently playing at the Palace Theatre.