The Outsiders

The Outsiders is a new musical adapted from S. E. Hinton's 1967 novel and from the 1983 film Francis Ford Coppola made of it. The setting is Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1967. Ponyboy Curtis, a bookish 14-year-old, runs with the Greasers, working-class boys from the east side of town, whose rivals are the Socs, the rich kids from the west side. When a clash between the gangs turns deadly, Ponyboy has to work out what he owes his friends, his brothers and himself.

The songs are by the folk and Americana duo Jamestown Revival, Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, together with Justin Levine. The book is by the playwright Adam Rapp with Levine, and Danya Taymor directed. After a world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2023, the show opened on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on April 11, 2024, and won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Expect a dirt floor, real fire and smoke, and rain falling onstage.

Ponyboy tells the story as he writes it down in a notebook. His parents have died. Darrel, called Darry, the oldest brother, was a football star who once had a way out of Tulsa; now he is raising his brothers, and the job does not come easily. Sodapop, the middle brother, still nursing a broken heart, keeps the peace between the other two. Ponyboy is reading Great Expectations and keeps finding his own family in it.

The gang is a second family. Johnny Cade, Ponyboy's best friend, comes from a violent home and was beaten up by Socs not long ago. Dally Winston, the hardest of the Greasers and fresh out of county lockup, looks out for Johnny and hands him his switchblade. After Bob Sheldon and his Socs jump Ponyboy and try to cut off his hair, Dally declares the kid a true Greaser, to Darrel's dismay.

At the drive-in, Ponyboy discovers he has a lot in common with Cherry Valance, a Soc who is Bob's girlfriend. He gets home past curfew, Darrel hits him, and he runs off with Johnny. When the Socs catch the two boys in the park and try to drown Ponyboy, Johnny stabs Bob to save him, and Bob dies. Dally gives them some money and sends them to hide in an abandoned church outside town.

In the second act, the police and the Socs are both hunting for them. Ponyboy cuts and bleaches his hair, and Paul Holden, a Soc who was once Darrel's best friend, calls for a rumble. At the church, Ponyboy recites a Robert Frost poem to Johnny at sunrise, one that echoes through the whole show. Back in Tulsa, Darrel and Dally argue over which of them is failing Ponyboy. Just as Johnny decides to turn himself in, the church catches fire. The boys pull trapped children out and become local heroes, but Johnny is badly hurt. Cherry clears them with the police and begs Ponyboy to stay out of the fight. All three Curtis brothers go to the rumble anyway.

Clay and Chance have been friends since childhood in Magnolia, Texas, and Jamestown Revival is based in Austin. Their albums, including the 2014 debut Utah, San Isabel and Young Man, set close harmonies over a mix of Western rock, Americana and Southern country. Levine describes the score as Americana that reaches into soul, rock and roll, country, blues, gospel and bluegrass. He orchestrated it with music director Matt Hinkley, and the band's sound is kept analog. There are 19 numbers, nine in the first act and 10 in the second. A few to know:

• "Tulsa '67" opens the show, with Ponyboy, Johnny and the company laying out the town and its divide; it returns as the finale.
• "Grease Got a Hold" is the gang's anthem, led by Dally, Sodapop, Two-Bit and Darrel.
• "Runs in the Family" belongs to Darrel, the brother carrying the household.
• "I Could Talk to You All Night" is a duet for Cherry and Ponyboy that follows the drive-in scene.
• "Run Run Brother" closes the first act as Dally sends the boys into hiding.
• "Soda's Letter" brings all three brothers into one song while Ponyboy is away.

Taymor built the production around the elements. The set works like Ponyboy's memory, assembled from drive-ins, parks, lawns and junkyards. Planks, tires, scrap, playground climbing bars and a car for each gang sit on the dirt, and the ensemble shifts cinder blocks and boards to move from place to place. Behind it stands a wall shaped like the back of an outdoor movie screen. Solid at first, it gradually opens to more and more sky, and after the fire a church window appears in it.

The lighting sticks to incandescent bulbs, daylight and the headlights and taillights of period cars, and saves gold light for the drive-in, the church and the very end. Projections show Ponyboy's dreams and memories. Each character wears one costume all night, the way Ponyboy remembers them. The sound comes through a spatial audio system with five speaker arrays spread across the proscenium.

The rumble is fought in onstage rain on dirt that turns to mud. It starts as a realistic brawl and gives way to stylized, expressive movement, and the company trained in martial arts and Viewpoints movement work to prepare. With rain, fire, smoke and stage blood in play, a licensed pyrotechnician is backstage at every performance. Onstage the Greasers are a racially diverse group, which they were not in the novel or the film, while the Socs are white; Hinton backed the choice when the team asked her.

Hinton began the novel at 15 and was 18 when Viking Press published it in 1967. She used her initials so that male reviewers would not dismiss the book because its author was a woman. Coppola's film, released by Warner Bros. on March 25, 1983, had a cast that included Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze. Christopher Sergel's 1990 play was the first stage version; the musical is the second.

A 2020 run at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, announced in 2019, was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a pared-down 2022 lab performance in New York, the world premiere played La Jolla Playhouse's Mandell Weiss Theatre from February 19 to April 9, 2023, with Brody Grant as Ponyboy. Broadway previews began on March 16, 2024, and opening night followed on April 11, with Grant, Sky Lakota-Lynch as Johnny, Joshua Boone as Dally, Brent Comer as Darrel, Jason Schmidt as Sodapop and Emma Pittman as Cherry.

The company performed "Tulsa '67," "Grease Got a Hold" and the rumble on the June 2024 Tony broadcast, and that July the cast album reached No. 1 on Billboard's Cast Albums chart. The production became the first in the Jacobs Theatre's history to pass the two-million mark in weekly grosses, and it earned back its capitalization about 20 months after opening. By October 11, 2026, it had played 1,042 performances. A North American tour began on September 17, 2025, in Buffalo, New York, and held its official opening that October at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, in the story's hometown.

Grant left the role of Ponyboy on September 21, 2025, and a new principal company led by Noah Pacht arrived on March 17, 2026. As of October 2026, Pacht plays Ponyboy, Caleb Mathura plays Johnny, SeQuoiia plays Dally and Sutton James Kaylor plays Sodapop, while Darrel is played by Dan Berry, the original Paul. Emma Pittman, Cherry since the first preview, is the last original principal still in her original role.