Fifteen blocks from where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel, a tribute is being performed for his alleged assassin.
The Green Room 42, a cabaret venue in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, was already buzzing on Monday when I arrived a half-hour early for opening night of “Luigi: The Musical.” The staged reading, which debuted in San Francisco last summer, imagines the relationships formed between three celebrity inmates who were all briefly held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at the same time: rapper-turned-predator Sean “Diddy” Combs, crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old Ivy League graduate who has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in the December 2024 killing of Thompson.
What followed was a fever dream from hell.
Patrons wearing Knicks jerseys and Mangione T-shirts, one depicting the inmate as a religious icon, filed into the sold-out, 130-seat venue. Some attendees were clearly fans of the alleged murderer, cheering him on throughout the performance. Others, like me, were filled with morbid fascination.
The show is billed as satire, “part comedy, part social commentary,” a “tale of love, murder, and hashbrowns.” Its creators, Nova Bradford, Arielle Johnson, André Margatini and Caleb Zeringue, insist that the musical doesn’t “glorify violence” but instead “interrogates” it, using comedy to expose how “normalized, and profitable, violence has become.” It aspires, however, to go “further.” Its “serious critique” of American life examines “how violence is not just the act of individuals, but of elite institutions — like healthcare, Hollywood, and tech — through their neglect, indifference, and lack of accountability.”
Satire, one of the sharpest tools of criticism, is typically promising. It was also hard to notice at all during the show’s 90 minutes. The performance turned out to be a string of gags about Bankman-Fried’s and Diddy’s sins that largely spared Mangione of the worst ridicule. It instead featured running jokes about how parts of the internet find him attractive, while the titular character is gifted love ballads, literally and metaphorically. His cast members call him a “prodigy” and a “legend.” His response: “I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a normal, exceedingly handsome guy.”
To make matters worse, they all sing. The show opens with the one thing that unites San Franciscans and New Yorkers: sky-high rent. “The cheapest room in Brooklyn is a cell,” the trio intones, as the audience is introduced to Mangione, played by Mike Cefalo, Bankman-Fried, played by co-writer and comedian Margatini, and Diddy, played by Chine Ikoro.
A lot is left to the viewer’s imagination. The musical has a bare-bones plot, practically no choreography and nothing in the way of a set apart from a couple of chairs and one prop, a gun. All that could be forgiven in a staged reading, but what is glaringly absent is any mention of Thompson’s name or the wife and two sons he left behind.
It’s clear the show’s creators think they have tapped into some profound observation of the nihilistic trends running through today’s culture: our numb responses to mass violence, the disintegration of societal trust. “What kind of sick f—- would buy tickets to something like that?,” the characters lament onstage about the musical, in what’s meant to be a self-critical, meta moment.
But there’s nothing cold or lifeless about the show’s treatment of Mangione. He is the protagonist, the innocent-looking, doe-eyed young man who “never wanted to hurt anyone” — except for the man he allegedly plotted to kill — and whose actions are described by the prison guard, played by Phillip Taratula, as “the Lord’s work.” Meanwhile, the musical’s villain, Big Insurance, never makes an appearance. It is present only in the stories sent in via fan mail to Mangione about denied reimbursements and treatment refusals. How can we deny your claim today, a voice is heard asking over the loudspeaker halfway through the show. Subtle, nuanced stuff.
I wondered several times whether the creators were more interested in rhyming than in saying anything of note. Any clever, meaningful critique of America’s crony health care system, of which there are many, is undercut by forced lyrics and dripping praise of an alleged killer. When (spoiler) Mangione escapes from prison, it’s because the guard falls hard for Luigi the Revolutionary. “I’ll give you your gun and a prayer, so your bullets can make this rigged game a little more fair,” he sings. “I see you, Luigi, and I think a lot of people out there do, too.”
By the time the show discovers irony, it’s too little, too late. “Every single human being’s life has worth,” Mangione sings in the final number. “That’s why I’ll shoot everybody until there’s peace on Earth.” If the audience was supposed to stop and ponder the sentiment, it didn’t. Some cheered at the line. The most reassuring response was from the woman sitting at the table next to me, who had fallen asleep.
The theater wasn’t over. As I left the auditorium, I ran into a crowd of protesters in the hallway. A woman holding a purple “FREE LUIGI! FREE US ALL!!” sign told me they were “advocates,” there to set the record straight.
“Luigi: The Trial,” a pamphlet she was distributing, claims the musical is “part of the problem” because Mangione hasn’t approved its contents. The handout also presumed his innocence and listed several grievances against profit-driven health care. Mangione, whom friends called “friendly, caring and generous,” is “caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between federal state and federal prosecutors,” the pamphlet added. “Except the trophy is a young man’s life.”
I couldn’t tell if life was imitating art, or art was imitating life. Either way, we may be doomed.
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