The satirical musical about alleged United Healthcare CEO murderer Luigi Mangione and his time in prison with Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried may be going on tour.
Luigi: The Musical has reportedly been selling out shows in San Francisco and now wants to open in new cities. The musical bills itself as a “satirical prison comedy inspired by the bizarre true story of three high-profile inmates housed together at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.”
“Part comedy, part social commentary, Luigi: The Musical reimagines larger-than-life public figures as exaggerated characters representing three disillusioned pillars of American life: healthcare, Hollywood, and tech,” it says on its website.
“There is this interesting thing that these three men represent three pillars of society that people have lost a lot of trust in in recent years, including health care, Hollywood and the whole tech/VC/finance ecosystem,” said Nova Bradford, head writer and director of the show. “And so what we want to explore more with the show is not about the individual actions of these actual people, but more so the place that these figures are occupying in the public consciousness and what it means about us when we’ve lost so much trust in institutions that are supposed to support us.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), tickets for the show have been going like hotcakes and the creators are now aiming for the “Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August and exploring possible future productions in New York and Los Angeles.”
“The musical, which Bradford wrote with Arielle Johnson, André Margatini and Caleb Zeringue, was initially slated for a handful of shows at San Francisco’s 49-seat Taylor Street Theater, where it premiered June 13. But after selling out the run, the production has since moved to The Independent, a 350-person theater, where it continues to draw crowds, particularly younger and nontraditional theatergoers,” noted THR.
In terms of critical acclaim, the musical received a less-than-favorable review from Lily Janiak of The San Francisco Chronicle, who wrote that the show has “all the finesse of a sketch comedy’s first draft.”
“The staging dithers. Your inner high school theater teacher yearns to beg one performer to take her hands out of her pockets,” she wrote. “Another actor so swallows his lines it’s as if he doesn’t want you to actually look at him, even though he’s in a theater under stage lights. At one point on opening night, a stagehand forgot to silence a walkie-talkie.”
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.