Ali Louis Bourzgui Stars as David in Broadway’s The Lost Boys Musical Adaptation

NEW YORK – Ali Louis Bourzgui is originating the role of David in “The Lost Boys,” a Broadway musical adaptation of the 1980s cult film. Bourzgui portrays the vampire frontman of the Cali-beach rock band, a character originally played by Kiefer Sutherland in the motion picture.

The production represents a strategic intersection of cinematic intellectual property and high-concept stagecraft. By blending the visual language of Los Angeles cinema with New York theater, the production utilizes extensive set design and aerial stunts to replicate the scale of the original film, while operating within Broadway’s commercial ecosystem governed by the Dramatists Guild’s longstanding framework on authorship and adaptation rights.

Production Development and Technical Execution

Bourzgui has been involved with the production since its inception, participating in a developmental workshop during the winter as the creative team worked to translate the 1987 film into a sustainable, long-running stage property. He notes that the role of David was expanded during this process to create a more three-dimensional character than the one presented in the film, giving the show a clearer emotional anchor in addition to its genre spectacle.

The production features a high degree of technical complexity. The staging incorporates aerial stunts where characters descend from the fly loft head-first toward the stage, pushing against the safety and engineering thresholds that have increasingly defined large-scale Broadway shows. To prepare for these sequences, Bourzgui and the cast underwent aerial movement training at a studio in Brooklyn, reflecting the industry’s tighter emphasis on risk management and performer safety in the wake of higher scrutiny from unions and insurers.

The transition from developmental readings to the final Broadway staging involved a significant increase in production value and coordination across design, rigging and safety departments. During early workshops, music stands were used as placeholders for motorcycles, and aerial sequences were simulated by running across the stage; those low-tech stand-ins have since been replaced by custom-built rigs, full sound design and a lighting plot designed to evoke the movie’s nocturnal boardwalk and coastline. That escalation in scale underscores how IP-based musicals now function as capital-intensive infrastructure projects for theaters, influencing programming decisions and season planning.

Artistic Direction and Influence

The musical’s score is rooted in rock and punk aesthetics, echoing the film’s original soundtrack while aiming squarely at contemporary Broadway rock audiences. Bourzgui cited the song “Have to Have You” as an example of the show’s sonic direction, comparing it to the styles of Green Day and Arctic Monkeys, a lane that has already proven commercially viable for shows such as “American Idiot.”

In developing the character of David, Bourzgui drew from 1980s performance styles, including Billy Idol and David Bowie’s role in “Labyrinth.” While he avoided creating a direct impression of Kiefer Sutherland, he studied Sutherland’s approach to the character’s pacing and intensity to understand how menace and charisma were balanced on screen, then recalibrated those choices for the intimacy of a live theater audience.

“[David] has time to kill. He’s patient because he’s immortal. Every moment is not that big of a deal to him, so there’s this boredom about him that is kind of passive-suave,” Bourzgui said. “And when something excites him, it really excites him. So he’ll go from this numbness to being really intense and not blinking and locked onto something, like a predator.”

Those choices sit inside a broader directorial vision that leans into the story’s themes of found family, youth rebellion and coastal-town governance under strain – ideas that have helped the “Lost Boys” mythology outlive its original box-office run and made it a candidate for franchise-style expansion across platforms.

Professional Background

The 26-year-old actor was raised in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, where he was exposed to regional theater through the Williamstown Theater Festival, Barrington Stage Company, and Shakespeare & Company – institutions that function as pipelines feeding talent into New York’s not-for-profit and commercial stages. After studying musical theater in college and graduating in 2021, Bourzgui entered the professional circuit just as Broadway and touring productions were rebuilding post-pandemic under evolving health and safety protocols.

His career trajectory includes:

• National tour of “The Band’s Visit” (post-graduation, 2021)
• Broadway debut as the lead in the revival of “The Who’s Tommy”
• Role of Orpheus in “Hadestown” (previous summer)

Those roles have positioned Bourzgui within a small cohort of young actors trusted with leading roles in high-risk commercial productions, a factor that can influence casting decisions by producers and boards as they weigh creative ambition against investor expectations. Bourzgui is currently nominated for a Critics Circle award for outstanding featured performer, underscoring how quickly he has moved from regional stages to industry recognition.

On opening night, Bourzgui will wear a replica of David’s signature earring from the original film – a small but deliberate continuity choice that nods to long-time fans of the franchise and to the broader, increasingly coordinated decision-making between studios and Broadway producers as they extend screen properties into live performance, a trend tracked closely by industry groups such as the Shubert Organization and other Broadway theater owners for its impact on programming, employment and urban cultural policy.