The Luigi Mangione Musical Comedy Is Already Sold Out
The Tony Award nominations are out (sorry, Luigi Magione that’s premiering next month in San Francisco, is completely sold out, according to People.
Here’s the official synopsis from the production’s website: “Luigi: the Musical is a comedy that imagines the surreal scenario of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, sharing a prison with real-life inmates Sam Bankman-Fried and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.”
If that set-up sounds like opportunistic playwrights trying to cash in on multiple contemporary scandals, you wouldn’t be wrong. But as the show’s producers point out, the premise is also “rooted in a strange truth”: Mangione, Bankman-Fried and Diddy were all incarcerated in the same prison. Whoa!
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“These three people represent these big pillars of institutions in society that are failing in their trust: health care, Hollywood and then big tech,” writer and producer Caleb Zeringue told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Another strange truth: The San Francisco theater is basing a musical comedy on an accused killer. But it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. The show’s creators were inspired by Chicago, the musical featuring the fictional Roxie Hart standing in for accused murderer Beulah Annan. (In that scenario, both the real-life and theatrical killers were acquitted.)
Mangione’s reality isn’t all that funny. He’s facing state and federal charges after being accused of fatally shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to both sets of charges, but if he’s convicted on the federal counts, Attorney General Pam Bondi intends to seek the death penalty.
The show’s producers seem to understand the potential discomfort. “This show is not a celebration of violence of any kind, nor is it an attempt to judgment on an ongoing legal matter,” according to the musical’s website. “Our hearts go out to the family of Brian Thompson, and we acknowledge the pain and complexity surrounding this case.”
That empathy won’t stop Luigi: The Musical from finding laughs. “Luigi the character, as we’ve written him, is dead serious about his thoughts and goals,” says Arielle Johnson, one of the show’s creators. “There’s something campy about the whole ‘good guy with a gun’ premise.”
Backstage footage on the musical’s Instagram provides a peek at the “laugh-out-loud funny” songs in store for audiences. Johnny Stein, who plays Mangione, is working out the kinks in one number:
Flash those pearly whites
There were cameras there that night
And that’s what let the police take me in
Hey, they still have a few weeks to refine the jokes before the show opens in June.