Stay gold with your first look at The Outsiders Broadway musical

Ever since The Outsiders was first published in 1967, it's been breaking hearts and giving teens a reflection of their own lives in S.E. Hinton's tale of class war between the working-class Greasers and the upper-middle-class Socs.

It reached a new audience with Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film adaptation, which served as a launchpad for some of the decade's brightest stars, including Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and Diane Lane.

Now The Outsiders is being reinvented once again — this time as a Broadway musical, opening April 11 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. EW has your exclusive first look at the cast in character, including Brody Grant as Ponyboy Curtis, Sky Lakota-Lynch as Johnny Cade, and Emma Pittman as Cherry Valance.

Set in Tulsa in 1967, The Outsiders follows a chosen family of "outsiders," held together by Ponyboy Curtis and Johnny Cade, as they fight for survival and purpose in a world determined never to accept them. The production describes it as "a story of the bonds that brothers share and the hopes we all hold on to," and promises to reinvigorate a "timeless tale of 'haves and have nots,' of protecting what's yours and fighting for what could be."

The cast also includes Joshua Boone as Dallas Winston, Brent Comer as Darrel Curtis, Jason Schmidt as Sodapop Curtis, Daryl Tofa as Two-Bit Mathews, Kevin William Paul as Bob Sheldon, and Dan Berry as Paul Holden.

It features a book by Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp and Justin Levine, with music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Levine. Both Levine and Rapp first discovered the book in school as teenagers.

"I was a freshman at St. John's, a boarding military academy in Delafield, Wis.," Rapp tells EW. "We were reading The Catcher in the Rye for a Great Books class. During study hours I left my copy of Catcher on my bunk when I went to the bathroom, and when I returned someone had stolen it. It was my first good reading experience as a young teenager, but I was only about 50 pages into it. But I had to find something else to read."

Rapp continues: "The Outsiders was the next book on the list, and it was with a stack of other books on my desk, so I grabbed it and was immediately held hostage by Ponyboy Curtis' voice, his story, his brothers, and of course, Cherry Valance. I couldn't put it down. I felt like I was stowing away with it on a ship. I think it was the first novel I read that was genuinely pleasurable."

Levine adds, "I read The Outsiders in eighth grade in Mrs. LaFemina's English class. It was the first proper novel I'd ever read, and I was instantly drawn into Ponyboy's mind and heart. I was struck by how relatable his view of the world was even though I came from a completely different place. It truly ignited my lifelong love of literature."

Director Danya Taymor (Pass Over), however, first encountered the story through the musical. "I was stunned by the music and the storytelling, which led me to read the novel," she says. "I read the book in one sitting, and burst out crying when Ponyboy reads the letter Johnny wrote to him just before he died. I was so deeply affected by the authenticity of Susie Hinton's voice, her unwavering ability to tell hard truths. She captured what it feels like to be a teenager so profoundly, and that struck a powerful nerve in me."

For Levine and Rapp, the lives of the Greasers and their struggle to connect with the world in spite of their feelings of alienation was ripe material for a musical. "I felt like the Greasers were beautifully inarticulate," Rapp reflects. "All these restless hearts and blue-collar bravado and tenuous dreams. The musical aspect — the actual singing of songs — afforded a mode in which these characters could express themselves when they didn't have the tools to do so through dialog or action. Philosophically that made a lot of sense to me."

Adds Taymor, "Music is perhaps the most profound medium for expressing emotion, and so the adaptation feels so natural. These boys are going through it in every way imaginable, and music allows an audience to dive deeply into their psyches. Susie Hinton has such a compassionate gaze on humanity, which allows her to uncover and expose so many different aspects of her characters."

Through the project's development, the entire team kept Hinton's book as their guiding light. Most importantly, the iconic line "Stay gold, Ponyboy" retains its place in the story. "Johnny’s iconic line appears in our show the same way it does in the novel," Levine explains. "It's a powerful moment between best friends, and it needs no additional help from us!"

Still, they wanted to be careful not to overplay their hand and make it too much of a thing. "I actually think we're pretty subtle about the phrase's first utterance," Rapp says. "It gets sung later, toward the end of the play, a number of times, but we were trying to be as efficient and subtle as possible before then. No one on the creative team wanted it to come off as cheesy or easy. It's a powerful phrase that lives on hats and T-shirts. Kids write it in their schoolbooks. They get tattoos. So we couldn't not go there. I think we saved it for the best possible moment."

Perhaps Taymor sums it up best. "Susie's novel has been our North Star throughout this process," she concludes. "Even as we adapt the story to the medium of theater, it is our touchstone that we return to again and again. 'Stay gold' is the beating heart of The Outsiders, a message of hope and resilience despite darkness and grief, as well a testament to the power of art to save our spirits, and therefore our lives."

Check out the photos above for more. The Outsiders begins previews March 16.

Related content:

• An oral history of The Outsiders
• Angelina Jolie hires 15-year-old daughter as assistant for Broadway production of The Outsiders
• S.E. Hinton on The Outsiders' 50th anniversary: 'I could never be that un-self-conscious again'