He sings, he dances, he assassinates.
A provocative new musical comedy about the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO gunman Luigi Mangione is headed to New York City — the real-life setting of the shocking killing — this summer.
“Luigi: The Musical,” a musical comedy immortalizing Luigi Mangione, is set to premiere in New York City this June. The Washington Post via Getty ImagesFollowing a brief run in San Francisco last June, “Luigi: The Musical” will go east to The Green Room 42 in Midtown on June 15 — a cabaret venue that’s a mere 20-minute subway ride from where Mangione is accused of gunning down insurance exec Brian Thompson outside of a Hilton Hotel in December 2024.
If a jokey lark centered around the cold-blooded murder of a husband and dad of two during an ongoing trial feels too soon, the NY performance’s timing has got nothing on the original.
Just six months after the slaying and ensuing five-day manhunt gripped America, an actor named Jonny Stein was already playing 27-year-old Mangione onstage — tap-dancing and belting away at a tiny theater in Northern California.
Although smiley, meme-friendly Mangione gets top billing — and, according to audience members, boisterous cheers — he’s not the only notorious boldfacer in the musical.
“Luigi” imagines, in song, Mangione, crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs all sharing the same prison cell at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. The three men really were all behind bars there at once.
The troublesome trio sing songs to justify their acts — like “Cats” in the clink.
Becoming a Gen Z. Jean Valjean, the title character croons, “Bringing down a tiny part of our broken health care system brings me enough happiness to share!”
La-la-la Luigi is also said to perform an upbeat ditty about ordering hashbrowns at McDonald’s, the fast food restaurant where he was arrested in Altoona, Penn.
Other tunes include “The Cheapest Room in Brooklyn,” about lockup, and “Bay Area Baby,” sung by Bankman-Fried.
A critic for the San Francisco Chronicle called “Luigi” “terrible,” while a writer for SFGATE said it “shot me through the heart.”
The cast of the Big Apple premiere, which claims to “interrogate” and not “glorify” violence, has not yet been announced. POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesLisa Bonos, a former Washington Post reporter who covered the musical’s Frisco frenzy, called the unusual event, “‘Chicago’ for the TikTok era.”
“‘Luigi’ deals with serious topics — crime, tragedy, Americans’ growing distrust of institutions — in a scrappy, satirical way that had Northern California audiences laughing out loud while also squirming in discomfort,” she told The Post.
And songwriter Arielle Johnson and director Nova Bradford claim on their musical’s website that “Luigi” doesn’t glorify violence, but rather “interrogates it.”
“We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions,” Bradford told The Chronicle.
The musical, which first played in San Francisco, is marketed as “a tale of love, murder, and hashbrowns.”
Even so, Mangione refers himself as a “martyr” in “Luigi,” and according to SFGATE, the character expresses a dream of changing the world by offing any CEO he decides does harm.
“Combs and Bankman-Fried look on in horror,” the writer added.
Representatives for the musical said the first Big Apple performance will be a staged reading, not a full production.
After “Luigi,” a four-actor show created on shoestring, was announced in 2025 and made headlines, its five-performance run at a 40-seat theater quickly sold out and a sixth performance was added.
The show features convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs as Mangione’s wacky jailhouse companions. The Washington Post via Getty ImagesIt then made the leap to the 500-seat Independent in San Francisco for more nights, and jetted all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
A British critic on the website Binge Fringe was appalled across the pond.
“My friends were crying with laughter at everything except the jokes,” he said.
Mangione faces life in prison at his upcoming murder trial in state court set for June if convicted of fatally shooting Thompson in a targeted hit on a Midtown sidewalk.
The June 15th musical about him? One night only.






