Francis Ford Coppola’s movie version of S. E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders” wraps its greaser characters in such a golden glow of reverence that one fairly expects the screen to belch the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The 1983 movie is best known today for being one of those Brat Pack movies that starred the usual suspects of the genre: Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and, in the lead role of Pony Boy, C. Thomas Howell, who delivers not James Dean but Brandon deWilde at his most virginal.
Coppola’s movie and Hinton’s novel are not great, or even decent, source material for a Broadway musical, but nonetheless, the show titled “The Outsiders” opened Thursday at the Bernard B.