NYMag Interview with Michael Arden on Lost Boys, QOV, MHE Casting

I do find it refreshing to hear a director talk about the facts and economics of Broadway in the way that he does here.

The brushing-off of the queerness is indeed weird, but it also felt like he quickly got annoyed with the interviewer, who was trying to get a play-by-play of the past year. Also felt like he was throwing the MHE authors under the bus a bit.

Re: QOV, I'd much rather a director throw up their hands and say "idk I thought it was good and this is what we were trying to do and I'm sorry it didn't work!" rather than that wild Rachel Chavkin New Yorker interview post-Lempicka.

In the past two years he's gone from Preacher's Wife in Atlanta, to Versailles in Boston, to MHE Broadway (which included the show almost falling apart pre-previews, then almost falling apart right after it opened, then its incredible resurrection + Tony wins), to launching the PARADE tour, to the quick demise of VERSAILLES on Broadway (and other workshops of that beforehand, and all the mean chatter about it), and now LOST BOYS (his biggest show to date which also reportedly had real money troubles). If I were him, I'd have more than a little "ptsd" from all that.

Updated On: 5/8/26 at 11:08 AM

https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.vulture.com/article/michael-arden-broadway-interview-lost-boys-tonys.html

Well this enlightening interview explains a lot. Namely how Superhero managed to stay in Lost Boys.......

Given the urgent discussions we have about the finances of Broadway, hearing from Michael Arden about that very thing is fascinating. He is going to take big swings and sometimes they won’t work, which happens with every ambitious director who is given a big budget. His logic in eschewing an out-of-town tryout for The Lost Boys is a candid assessment of the tradeoffs a director must make these days.

As for the Maybe Happy Ending casting flap, I have no reason to think the writers and Arden aren’t telling the truth. They believe that the robots can played by actors of any race, though not the Korean people. That’s a perfectly defensible position, regardless of the controversy it caused. (Had they not opened with Asian actors on Broadway, there would have been no fuss.) Arden made a point of noting the Black actress who will be a standby, so the creatives are not backing down even though the upcoming leads on Broadway and on tour are of Asian descent.

What’s fascinating about Arden is that he sees himself as the director of big, emotional productions on a large scale - even if, as in Maybe Happy Ending, the cast might be small. Few directors are even trying this given the economics of Broadway.

Arden seems almost absurdly busy right now, but so were a lot of Broadway’s most successful directors in their prime. Success makes a director in demand, so he’s right to strike while the iron is hot.