A new musical about alleged murderer Luigi Mangione is heading to San Francisco.
Luigi: the Musical will premiere at the Taylor Street Theater in San Francisco in June. The musical will “imagine Mangione’s backstory,” according to Playbill, as “details about him have been scarce.”
“A wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero. With real-life cellmates Sam Bankman-Fried and Diddy by his side, Luigi navigates friendship, justice, and the absurdity of viral fame,” a synopsis reads. “Bold, campy, and unafraid, Luigi: the Musical is both laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly thoughtful. If you like your comedy smart and your showtunes with a criminal record, Luigi is your new favorite felony.”
Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, director Nova Bradford said, “One 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.” She added, “We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions.”
“When people interact with these systems that they’ve lost trust in, it creates such a sense of isolation, and comedy inherently is connective,” Bradford noted.
Prosecutors have filed a notice to seek the death penalty for Mangione. The filing says that “a sentence of death is justified” and that the “United States will seek the sentence of death for this offense: Murder through Use of a Firearm, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 924(j), which carries a possible sentence of death.”
Mangione “presents a future danger because he expressed intent to target an entire industry, and rally political and social opposition to that industry, by engaging in an act of lethal violence,” the filing says, noting that he “took steps to evade law enforcement, flee New York City immediately after the murder, and cross state lines while armed with a privately manufactured firearm and silencer.”
