The writer of “A Bronx Tale,” a touring Broadway musical coming next week to the Orpheum Theater, says the show endures because everybody can relate to it. Chazz Palminteri originally wrote the piece as a semiautobiographical one-man play about his childhood in the Bronx. When he was a young boy, he witnessed a shooting after two men were fighting over a parking space.

When police asked him to identify the shooter, he declined, saying he didn’t know who it was. That started a friendship between him and the man with the gun, known as Sonny in the play. He started hanging around with the guy and his mob friends, doing favors and odd jobs. His dad opposed the friendship, seeing them as bad influences.