From left: Chelsie Nectow, Keiji Ishiguri, Peter DiMaggio; photo courtesy of Benjamin Rose Photography.
Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company
Written and Composed by Justin Huertas
Directed by Lyndsay Allyn Cox
Music Direction by Violet Wang
October 25-November 23, 2025
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion
Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02116
Run-time: 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission
Critique by Diana Lu
BOSTON — It’s been ten years since Lizard Boy: A New Indie-Rock Musical premiered in Seattle, and SpeakEasy Stage Company has proven its Lizard BOY is a capable and self-assured MAN-phibian. Under the direction of Lyndsay Allyn Cox and the musical direction of Violet Wang, SpeakEasy’s invigorating revival allows the many strengths of the show’s impressive score and cast to shine, while also exposing its narrative limits.
Lizard Boy finds Trevor, a gay, green-skinned twenty-something, on the first anniversary of a painful breakup. While looking for love, he reveals this is the only night of the year he leaves the house—and the anniversary of the childhood dragon attack that turned his skin green. As the evening unfolds, he finds companionship, an archnemesis, a superpower, his soul truth, and maybe… the end of the world!
Huertas crafted a uniquely fantastical hybrid that combines romcom and superhero epic, all told through a queer BIPOC lens. Musically exquisite, the score melds rock, folk, a acapella, and musical theatre, and requires the tremendously talented triple-threat cast to sing, beatbox, dance and play half a dozen instruments. The songs are so intrinsic to the story that they drive character and plot as much as they stand alone as great freakin’ bops, and they are played brilliantly by the cast.
Each performer is exceptional in their own right. From the moment the three actor-musicians step onto the minimal Calderwood Pavilion stage, instruments in hand, the audience is drawn into Lizard Boy’s world by the sheer force of their charisma. Keiji Ishiguri embodies Trevor with a tender authenticity that makes every anxious spiral and defensive tantrum feel grounded and empathetic—and boy, can he make a standing cello sing. Peter DiMaggio imbues Cary with gentle humor and sensitivity, the perfect counterpoint to Trevor’s prickly angst. Chelsie Nectow as Siren is sheer succubus magnetism, her Broadway-caliber voice filling the theater while still reserving softness for vulnerable moments.
Cox’s directorial debut has the precision and efficiency of a Swiss watch; every staging choice seemed crafted with intention, propelling the narrative with the snappy, saltatory rhythm of comic panels. At one point, the cast performs a live split-screen sequence in which two time points are represented simultaneously. Even then, the plot was easy to follow and emotionally resonant. Wang’s musical direction fills the theatre with lush two- and three-part harmonies that move effortlessly between humor, heartbreak, and healing.
SpeakEasy’s Lizard Boy is stagecraft perfection, honoring the ethos of the 2015 original while giving it fresh vitality. Yet because the execution is so flawless, there’s nothing to distract from the show’s narrative flaws—namely, the jarring clash between intimate rom-com and superhero epic, the latter of which seems to come out of nowhere in Act II. The core issue is that Trevor’s green skin functions as a metaphor for BIPOC identity and the isolation that comes with being othered. Instead of exploring those experiences directly as he does with queerness, Huertas masks this part of his identity in dragons, apocalypses, and mythic origin stories. This can be a valid choice, but it feels particularly off here because Lizard Boy’s thematic payoff is supposed to be fully unmasking and embracing all of your humanity.
This is where Lizard Boy feels very much a product of its time. 2015 was a year after Ferguson, when race was just entering mainstream American discourse. In 2025, the superhero framing feels especially superfluous and grating. 2025-me grieves for the 2015 Justin Huertas, who didn’t write directly about being five years old and a different skin color than his classmates, or dating as a brown gay man in an online culture where “no spice, no rice” was widely accepted vernacular. Leaning on spectacle not only weakened Lizard Boy’s story and coherence, but also its emotional authenticity and credibility as a space where all differences and painful truths are safely held and witnessed.
SpeakEasy’s tenth anniversary production is both a marker of how far we’ve come and a reminder that authentic storytelling, unmediated by metaphor, often carries the most profound impact. The performers are captivating, the music is rich and catchy, and the staging pulls the audience into the characters’ hearts and onto the comic-book page. But Lizard Boy is at its most powerful when it allows vulnerability and lived experience to shine without shields. What lingers in my mind days later isn’t the dragons—it’s the feeling that another story is hiding beneath this one—and when Huertas is ready to tell that story, it will surely be a masterpiece.
