Ali Louis Bourzgui has a Tony nomination, a memorable wig, and a harness that sends him flying above the stage eight times a week.
Bourzgui is currently starring as David in The Lost Boys, the new Broadway musical based on the 1987 cult horror film. The role, made famous on screen by a young Kiefer Sutherland, has earned Bourzgui a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical. The character is a vampire rock star, and the performance requires Bourzgui to project seductive danger and emotional vulnerability at the same time, often while airborne above the stage of the Palace Theater.
According to Billboard, Bourzgui first made an impression on Broadway in the 2024 revival of The Who's Tommy, a production that ran only four months. His performance in The Lost Boys has given him a second, longer-lasting shot at the spotlight.
He said the audition process for this show stood apart from anything he had encountered before. "You get auditions sent to you, and most of them, you're kind of like, 'This is cool, I can't really get a grasp of the vibe of this show, but I'll audition,'" he said. "And every once in a while, something comes through where you just feel it tangibly, even through an email. I saw this initial packet, and I got so excited — like more excited than I've been for an audition maybe ever."
Part of that excitement came from the creative team. The musical is directed by Tony winner Michael Arden, and the music and lyrics were written by The Rescues, a Los Angeles indie band. Bourzgui recalled hearing the demos for the first time: "I was like oh, these songs are f—ing cool." He also noted that the character of David was, from the beginning, "so well-written from the start."
Bourzgui has been vocal about his skepticism toward movie-to-musical adaptations in general. He said he typically gravitates toward original work and would not have taken the job if the show felt like a generic remake. In this case, he said the production convinced him otherwise.
The show plays in the Palace Theater, one of Broadway's largest houses. Bourzgui said that despite the scale of the space, the production manages to feel intimate, which he credits to how the show was built from the ground up rather than simply staged around its source material.
He spoke to Billboard between a matinee and a physical therapy session, still wearing traces of glitter from the performance. As a singer and songwriter himself, Bourzgui said he approached David not as a stock vampire figure but as a character with specific rock star influences and a specific kind of pain underneath the menace.
The Tony Awards will determine whether the performance earns him the prize to go with the nomination.
