It’s an hour before curtain at “The Lost Boys,” and Ali Louis Bourzgui is rolling out a red yoga mat in his dressing room so he can work his core before the matinee starts. As David, the rock god vampire whose bloodlust drives the Broadway musical’s action, Bourzgui struts across the stage, soars through the air, hangs upside down and, at one point, leaps from a bridge into the orchestra pit.
“You work muscles you didn’t know you had,” Bourzgui says as he bends upward into an inverted pyramid before lunging back toward the ground. “I need this time to just prepare my body for what’s ahead.”
Over the next 30 minutes, Bourzgui will use a resistance band to stretch his arms, perform crunches and lunges and pound an espresso. The exercises come courtesy of a physical therapist that Bourzgui consulted after he got the role, but he’s modified the routine with a few tricks he learned from Billy Mulholland, the production’s aerial trainer. Bourzgui and the other vampires spend a large part of the show suspended by wires as they fly across the Palace Theatre, and that’s put a strain on the actor’s shoulders and back. But it’s also taught him a valuable lesson.
“I used to have a fear of heights, but doing this show proved to me that I can conquer anything,” Bourzgui says. Part of his newfound assuredness he attributes to the character he’s playing. In the show, David calls the shots, running herd on the bloodsucking members of his band by the sheer force of his magnetism.
“David has bled into my life,” Bourzgui says. “When I am in full costume and doing these scenes on the wires, I’m not scared, because he’s not scared. He’s so confident that I find that even when I’m socializing, I’m sort of channeling him. I find I don’t take things so seriously.”
But the sweet-natured Bourzgui takes his transformation into a slyly seductive vampire very seriously. He drew on a range of influences to shape the part, studying rock stars like Billie Joe Armstrong, Tina Turner and David Bowie, to figure out how David peacocks and preens. “A lot of those stars walk and move their hips in these strange ways that are kind of iconic,” Bourzgui says. “I also looked at how Tim Curry moves his mouth in ‘Rocky Horror.’ It was all about doing something really bold and weird and committing 100% to it.”
He also watched “Mad Men” and “Peaky Blinders,” shows about powerful men whose charisma bends people to their will, as well as staples of the horror genre like “Interview With the Vampire” and “True Blood.” “I was a media sponge,” Bourzgui says.
The wig he wears is a clear riff on Billy Idol’s spiky-haired mullet, while the long, talon-like nails he grew out are a nod to “Nosferatu.” “I need to wave my hand in this witchy way and the nails help,” he says.
“The Lost Boys,” which opened in April and is one of the season’s biggest bets, is based on the 1987 cult horror film of the same name. Kiefer Sutherland, at the height of his teen idol-dom, played Bourzgui’s role. He’s seen the show and liked it so much that he became a producer. But even though he heaps praise on Sutherland’s work, Bourzgui wanted to distinguish his version of David from the big-screen one. The purring baritone he deploys, much deeper than his real voice, has a Sutherland-like raggedness, but there’s a seductive quality that’s unique.
“I needed something that was sultry and raspy, but also a tone like a cult leader that has people kind of leaning in to whatever it is you’re saying,” Bourzgui says as he applies eyeliner and body glitter. “Plus, he’s been around forever so he’s kind of bored by a lot of things.”
In “The Lost Boys,” David tries to lure Michael Emerson (LJ Benet), a rebellious teenager who has moved with his family to the beachside community, over to the dark side. Their bond feels vaguely homoerotic.
“There’s something about Michael that surprises David and he hasn’t been surprised in so long,” Bourzgui says. “It makes him feel alive.”
To prepare, Bourzgui wrote a 90-page backstory for his character. He decided that long before David brought his punk energy to Santa Carla’s dive bars, he was a grunt in World War I.
“You have to create a whole world for the character you play if you want the person to seem real to an audience,” Bourzgui says. “I’d love to compare notes with Kiefer to see if we have the same idea about where David came from.”
Tony voters were impressed by Bourzgui’s metamorphosis, handing him a nomination for best featured actor in a musical. At 26, he’s this season’s youngest acting nominee. Bourzgui performed on the Tony telecast in 2024 when he was playing the title role in “The Who’s Tommy,” but he didn’t get to watch the ceremony. This year, he’ll be in the audience, alongside his mom, whom he is bringing as his date.
“I don’t fully understand what’s happened to me,” Bourzgui admits of his nomination. “I’m just trying to process it.” There are a few downsides to awards season. “You have to go to all these parties where the music is always loud. So you end up shouting, which isn’t great for maintaining your voice.”
With 10 minutes to go before the show starts, Bourzgui walks me to the stage door so he can get ready to make his entrance. He wants to make sure I don’t get turned around, and that I have enough time to get to my seat. The first time Bourzgui appears, brandishing a guitar and an insinuating smile, it takes me a second to realize that the sinister rocker is being played by the gentle person I’ve watched do 30 minutes of calisthenics. He seems so… dangerous.
“That’s what’s fun about this job, getting a chance to be somebody completely different,” Bourzgui told me as he got ready. “This is the most physically demanding, vocally demanding and mentally demanding thing I’ve ever done.”
Leave a Reply