Ali Louis Bourzgui didn’t develop up jamming out to “Pinball Wizard” and “Baba O’Riley.”
The actor, in spite of everything, was born greater than three many years after The Who’s first album “My Era” got here out in 1965.
His era is Z.
And but, final August, the fortunate 24-year-old was a VIP at their live performance in England as he chatted backstage with legendary guitarist Pete Townshend.
“I went and frolicked with Pete and obtained to sit down down and discuss to him for just a few hours,” Bourzgui advised me over lunch at Joe Allen.
“After which I obtained to sit down backstage — like midway onstage — and watch Roger [Daltrey] and the band carry out with the entire orchestra.”
That present on the Royal Sandringham Property lasted 4 hours.
“Now,” he stated, “I’m an enormous fan.”
And so they’re diehards of his, too. Bourzgui is the break-out star of “The Who’s Tommy” on Broadway, Townshend’s musical during which the younger phenom rocks out because the title “deaf, dumb and blind child” who turns into a worldwide sensation.
Bourzgui is on the verge of main issues as nicely — fortunately much less dramatically so than Tommy.
His Broadway debut is a knockout — probably the most thrilling of the final a number of years. The actor’s critiques final month have been euphoric (together with a four-star rave from The Publish), and it’s unimaginable to discover a theater agent on the town who doesn’t desperately want he was their consumer.
Townshend, who first watched Bourzgui sort out the complicated function of Tommy Walker at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in the summertime of 2023, stated he was born for the half.
“Ali hasn’t required the sort of rock ’n’ roll anointment that I’ve offered to a few of the actors in Tommy prior to now,” Townshend advised The Publish.
“He hasn’t wanted a lecture about what makes a star, and what could cause a star to fall. He simply will get it.”
And, the “Tommy” composer added, “he brings youth and beauty and a wholesome head of curly black hair.”
Bourzgui, who’s Moroccan American, grew up in Pittsfield, Mass., in a household of artists and performers. Lengthy earlier than he grew to become the Wizard of Pinball, his first function in sixth grade was in “The Wizard of Oz.”
“A munchkin,” he stated.
After learning at Ithaca School, Bourzgui moved to New York Metropolis, the place he lives with a roomie and a cat, and toured the nation within the musical “The Band’s Go to.”
After which, whereas working in Chicago, he obtained referred to as in for “Tommy.”
“When he walked in, he appeared contemporary, he appeared totally different,” director Des McAnuff stated of his audition for the present. “He was proper out of college, however there was undoubtedly a calmness.”
Bourzgui remembers that momentous day slightly in a different way.
“I used to be truly freaking out!,” he stated. “I’m glad it didn’t learn like that.”
In a kismet second, the actor discovered he landed the half as he was strolling out of one other Broadway present into Instances Sq..
Zen in particular person, onstage Bourzgui is positively nuclear. He has a stadium rocker power (aided by yoga and an espresso shot a day) and an otherworldly voice as he, a baritone, wails tenor songs like “Sensation” and “I’m Free.”
“What he brings to the sound is a sort of heat and depth,” McAnuff stated. “A gravitas.”
Eight instances per week, when Bourzgui and the “Tommy” solid sing “Listening To You” on the finish of their present, a swell of viewers members who’re, ahem, a tad older than he’s, leap to their toes, sway and pump their fists.
“It occurs with out fail — each efficiency,” Bourzgui stated, in awe of the gang’s response.
“It’s fantastic that folks really feel that temper, and that it excites them. Only for anybody to have the ability to [join in]. That’s the entire level of theater.”