‘Luigi The Musical,’ Based On Life Of Accused CEO Assassin Luigi Mangione, Opens In San Francisco To ‘Terrible’ Reviews

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Baila Eve ZismanJune 17, 2025, 11:38 pmNews >

Kicking off with the wave of ‘No Kings’ protests last weekend, Luigi the Musical premiered on June 13 at the Taylor Street Theatre in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.

The play was announced in April, and the 49-seat theater sold out its initial run instantly. With a story in The New York Post and a mention on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, among other national headlines, the musical received a level of publicity few plays can nab, and shortly before the show began, it was announced that an additional date in July had been added.

Luigi The Musical – based on the actions of Luigi Mangione, the suspect who allegedly gunned down the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December – emphasizes the public’s fury over the for-profit healthcare system through its cheery and cheeky take on murder.

The play, written by Nova Bradford, Arielle Johnson, André Margatini and Caleb Zeringue, reportedly spends the majority of its time making cheap pokes at Mangione and the fact that he is being held in the same detention center as Sean Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried.

Lily Janiak from The San Francisco Chronicle compared it to a sketch comedy’s first draft, noting the song lyric, “Bringing down a tiny part of our broken healthcare system brings me enough happiness to share,” and writing, “The two uses of ‘bring’ in one line [lacerate] the ear.”

Janiak went on to remark that a crew member forgot to silence their walkie-talkie through the show, actors mumbled their lines, and “Your inner high school theater teacher yearns to beg one performer to take her hands out of her pockets.”

A more poignant moment in the play sees Mangione and a prison guard lamenting their health insurance problems, and Mangione explains, “I wanted them to understand what it feels like when someone else gets to decide if you live or die.”

In the musical’s final number, a shirtless Mangione is carried around figure-skater style as he dreams of escaping prison with lyrics like “every single human being’s life has worth / so I’ll shoot everybody until there’s peace on Earth.”

Although Janiak was disappointed with the performance, The Independent noted that the musical received a standing ovation and suggested that its light-hearted humor is the type of satire that will most engage the audience of younger theater-goers politically.