{"id":41214,"date":"2025-05-11T21:37:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T04:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41214"},"modified":"2025-05-11T21:37:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T04:37:35","slug":"musical-about-luigi-mangione-suspect-in-killing-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo-premiering-in-s-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/11\/musical-about-luigi-mangione-suspect-in-killing-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo-premiering-in-s-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical about Luigi Mangione, suspect in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO, premiering in S.F."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Lily Janiak<\/a>,Theater criticApril 30, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Luigi Mangione, the suspect indicted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arrives at the South Street Helipad in New York City in\u00a0December\u00a02024, after being extradited from Pennsylvania. He\u2019s now the subject of a musical. XNY\/Star Max\/GC Images<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Having already dominated social media and thirsty group chats, Luigi Mangione<\/a> is poised to take over another medium: musical theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cLuigi the Musical,\u201d which opens June 13, at the Taylor Street Theatre (formerly the Exit on Taylor<\/a>), isn\u2019t just about the 26-year-old prime suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson<\/a>. Nova Bradford, Arielle Johnson, Andr\u00e9 Margatini and Caleb Zeringue\u2019s show was inspired by an extraordinary coincidence of celebrity inmates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Information<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLuigi the Musical\u201d: <\/strong>Written by Nova Bradford, Arielle Johnson, Andr\u00e9 Margatini and Caleb Zeringue. Directed by Bradford. Performances begin June 13. Through June 28. $32. Taylor Street Theatre, 277 Taylor St., S.F. https:\/\/luigithemusical.info<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zeringue, who produces and plays a guard in the show as well as co-writes, recalled how, one night at South of Market leather bar the SF Eagle, Bradford said to him, \u201cDid you hear that\u00a0Luigi\u2019s in the same prison with\u00a0Diddy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sam Bankman-Fried<\/a>? I wanna write a musical about that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the show, set at Brooklyn\u2019s Metropolitan Detention Center, rapper and music producer Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs, who last year was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering, and the fallen FTX CEO are characters too, played by Jane\u00e9 Lucas and Margatini, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u200b\u200bThese three people represent these big pillars of institutions in society that are failing in their trust: health care, Hollywood and then big tech,\u201d Zeringue told the Chronicle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradford, Johnson and Zeringue all know each other from San Francisco\u2019s stand-up comedy scene. They felt that Mangione and his fellow inmates lent themselves to musical theater for several reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLuigi the character, as we\u2019ve written him, is dead serious about his thoughts and goals,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThere\u2019s something campy about the whole \u2018good guy with a gun\u2019 premise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One inspiration for the show was \u201cChicago,\u201d with its cellblock numbers, Johnson noted, so in the production, audiences will see Luigi (Jonny Stein) burst into song behind bars, lamenting, \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have bought those hash browns in that Pennsylvania Mickey D\u2019s.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, the character of Bankman-Fried gives a Ted Talk into a camera from his prison cell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe literally just podcasted with Tucker Carlson from the prison cell with Diddy,\u201d Zeringue pointed out, referring to the Bay Area crypto currency entrepreneur\u2019s appearance on \u201cThe Tucker Carlson Show\u201d in March. \u201cSo I\u2019m like, did we write this musical or did it write itself?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Bradford, who directs the show, noted that the relative lack of confirmed information about Mangione can be an asset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne 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,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also noted the surprise value in a musical that\u2019s so immediate and zeitgeist-y it\u2019s \u201cof Twitter right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson\u2019s other writing credit in the genre, \u201cThe Minotaur: A Dark Comedy About Losing Your Mind in Grad School,\u201d took five years to pen. By contrast, Johnson and Bradford whipped up \u201cLuigi the Musical\u201d in two months \u2014 far beating out any hypothetical miniseries that has the internet demanding that Palo Alto\u2019s own Dave Franco<\/a> (of the \u201cNow You See Me\u201d film franchise<\/a>) to play Mangione.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was important to the trio that their show not glorify homicide or any of the allegations against their other subjects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not valorizing any of these characters, and we\u2019re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions,\u201d Bradford emphasized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she continued, \u201cComedy inherently plays at the margins of social acceptability.\u201d Zeringue pointed out that comedy is often called a \u201cbenign violation.\u201d If Mangione taps into what the betrayal that so many feel about health care and other institutions, comedy is perfectly poised to heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people interact with these systems that they\u2019ve lost trust in, it creates such a sense of isolation, and comedy inherently is connective,\u201d Bradford said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Correction: <\/strong>A headline on an earlier version of this story mischaracterized the status of Luigi Mangione. He is a suspect in the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 30, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Lily Janiak<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

THEATER CRITIC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. A Michigan native whose childhood also took her to Tennessee and Texas, she holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State. She served on the jury for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Lily Janiak,Theater criticApril 30, 2025 Luigi Mangione, the suspect indicted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arrives at the South Street Helipad in New York City in\u00a0December\u00a02024, after being extradited from Pennsylvania. He\u2019s now the subject of a musical. XNY\/Star Max\/GC Images Having already dominated social media and… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41216,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41214\/revisions\/41216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}