{"id":42628,"date":"2025-07-15T12:23:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T19:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=42628"},"modified":"2025-07-15T12:23:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T19:23:33","slug":"luigi-the-musical-is-as-silly-as-it-sounds-also-kind-of-subversive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/07\/15\/luigi-the-musical-is-as-silly-as-it-sounds-also-kind-of-subversive\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Luigi: The Musical’ Is as Silly as It Sounds, Also Kind of Subversive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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14 JULY 2025\/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT<\/a>\/JAY BARMANN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luigi: The Musical<\/em> has been something of an underground hit in San Francisco since debuting last month at the Taylor Street Theater. And while it’s definitely dumb and quite rough around the edges, it is a subversive good time in line with drag parodies and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Stupid” is a word that’s used with a fair bit of love in the world of Rupaul’s Drag Race<\/em> \u2014 as in, “That impression was so stupid in all the right ways” \u2014 and in the wider world of drag performance. Committing to a bit can lead to some glorious stupidity and laughs, and taking humor to stupid places is part of what drag and improv are about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should surprise no one that a musical that was thrown together in a couple of months, riffing on the absurd celebrity triumvirate of inmates who found themselves in a Brooklyn lockup together earlier this year \u2014 alleged healthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione<\/a>, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried \u2014 is pretty silly and stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the fact that it didn’t totally flop and flame out after a couple of performances is a testament to a few truths about Bay Area audiences \u2014 namely that they appreciate when a bit is taken to absurd lengths, and they can handle a certain degree of clownishness in their theater \u2014 and to the unique charms of this very<\/em> rough draft of a show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luigi: The Musical<\/em> premiered on Friday, June 13 at the Taylor Street Theater, and thanks to national coverage by Stephen Colbert<\/a> and coverage by our local CBS afiliate, quickly sold out its limited run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cast and crew found a second home at the larger venue The Independent, performing two shows Sunday \u2014 one of which I was able to catch \u2014 and performing the show again at 8 pm this Tuesday, and on Tuesday July 22, for which tickets are still available<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewing the show in all seriousness<\/a>, as a piece of theater, in the Chronicle, critic Lily Janiak calls it “terrible” and plodding \u2014 which, at points, it is! \u2014 but acknowledging that its immediate audience draw “proves that we still crave theater that helps us make sense of current events and envision fresh political possibilities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It certainly toes the line between amateurish, high school\/college production and an off-off-Broadway or festival showcase, but I’ve definitely seen worse at Fringe Festivals \u2014 and this show at least maintains its sense of humor about itself. In Sunday’s performances, they’d even worked in meta-asides like “The San Francisco Chronicle said we were terrible!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to call any of the songs, written by Arielle Johnson and Nova Bradford, “good” in any objective sense, but they function more as comic novelty than as emotional releases, like in a traditional musical. Maybe the most successful, from a satirical point of view, is Luigi’s “Hash Brown Song,” in which he recounts how his love of the greasy McDonald’s breakfast item was his ultimate undoing, and, in retrospect, maybe he shouldn’t have been carrying his laptop and manifesto in his backpack at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DLs2LPdyy_E\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


As Luigi, handsome local actor and comedian Jonny Stein \u2014 who apparently also knows ballet from some stints in Newsies<\/em> \u2014 is constantly threatening to unzip his orange jumpsuit and show us some nip, until he finally takes his top off (spoiler alert!) near the end. And he does so while singing the most subversive, tongue-in-cheek number of the show, waving a gun and singing about “shooting everybody ’til there’s peace on Earth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Sam Bankman-Fried, Andr\u00e9 Margatini shows some equally strong comedic chops, and got some full-audience laughs ad-libbing about some of Sunday’s technical difficulties \u2014 the performers’ microphones were less than great. And as Diddy, Jan\u00e9e Lucas was a bit soft-spoken and rushed many lines, but her comedic timing was solid and she could sing, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playing a prison guard at Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn, executive producer and cowriter Caleb Zeringue seemed less than comfortable on stage, until he got to dance with Luigi and explain about his character’s own trauma in the American healthcare system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is definitely true that satire like this is going to feel shallow to many, and even cruel to the friends and family of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and Diddy’s many apparent victims. But if you’re taking it there, and not seeing the show for the bizzarro, too-soon, wholly stupid<\/em> live-action regurgitation of internet thirst-traps and memes that it is, then you’re not the target audience anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe I’ve just seen too many Rusicals<\/a> and I don’t know the difference between good and bad satire anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Luigi: The Musical’ plays at The Independent on July 15 and 22. Find tickets here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Top image: Photo by Jim McCambridge<\/a> via Instagram<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 JULY 2025\/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT\/JAY BARMANN Luigi: The Musical has been something of an underground hit in San Francisco since debuting last month at the Taylor Street Theater. And while it’s definitely dumb and quite rough around the edges, it is a subversive good time in line with drag parodies 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\/42628"}],"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=42628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42630,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42628\/revisions\/42630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}