In adapting a novel for the stage you have to forget a little bit about what the fans of the novel are going to think, and instead you have to re-conceive the story for a completely different medium. I don't know if Anne Rice has cooperated very much but the creative team need to understand this is now a stage musical, no longer a novel. This is what the most successful adaptation have done. Wicked even re-conceived the whole novel making the story about Glinda and Elphaba instead of Elphaba herself (no matter how mediocre the book is, they successfully created a stage show that's still selling out). If Lestat wants to succeed they might have to be unfaithful to the novel. If it's a well-done job, people will appreciate it better than if they stay faithful to the novel but end up with a poor show.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"