An upcoming musical lampooning the public’s obsession with accused killer Luigi Mangione is sold out — months before its June premiere.
“Luigi: The Musical” will light up the stage at San Francisco’s Taylor Theater on June 13 for an initial five performances, with more promised on the website.
Billing itself as a “wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero,” this “story of love, murder and hash browns” imagines Mangione’s life alongside fellow inmates Sam Bankman-Fried and Sean “Diddy” Combs, who are all being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
The unlikely convergence of the three notorious inmates in the same prison is part of what inspired the musical in the first place, creators Nova Bradford, Caleb Zeringue and Arielle Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle. Combs is awaiting trial on human-trafficking, drug and racketeering charges, and FTX founder and former CEO Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years for crypto fraud. Hip-hop mogul Combs was already a celebrity before being arrested last year, while Bankman-Fried was once hailed as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
Mangione, accused of plotting and carrying out the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, has garnered a following after the fact. Despite the cold-bloodedness of his alleged crime, many see it as an indictment of a health care system that values money over people. Mangione has pleaded not guilty as he tries to avoid the death penalty.
Rather than glorifying or vilifying the three characters and their actions, “Luigi: The Musical” is part reflection on the public’s fascination with the doers of dastardly deeds, and part jab at institutional betrayal, the creators said.
“These three people represent these big pillars of institutions in society that are failing in their trust: health care, Hollywood and then big tech,” Zeringue told the Chronicle.
It’s also a hat tip to — and a possible reimagining of — “Chicago,” built around fictional protagonist Roxie Hart and the fallout after she murders a lover. That too is based on a real-life case.
“One of the central ideas that we wanted to explore with this musical is this tendency for us to project meaning onto these types of figures,” Bradford, who directs the show, told the Chronicle. “We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions.”
Other shows have examined similar themes, from the throat-slitting barber of “Sweeney Todd,” to the adulation of “Public Enemy Number One” in “Anything Goes.”
In one “Luigi: the Musical” number, Mangione the character laments the McDonald’s hash browns order that indirectly led investigators to him. And, underscoring the degree to which art and life intertwine, Bankman-Fried’s character gives a Ted Talk from his cell that is not unlike the real-life podcast he did with Tucker Carlson last month, Zeringue said, adding, “So I’m like, did we write this musical or did it write itself?”
With News Wire Services