Luigi Mangione Musical Will Premiere in San Francisco

A new original musical will make its debut this summer with a storyline that combines viral infamy, true crime, and sharp social satire. LUIGI THE MUSICAL opens June 13, 2025, at the Taylor Street Theatre (formerly the Exit on Taylor) in San Francisco.

Written by Nova Bradford and Arielle Johnson, with original music and lyrics by Johnson, the show is directed by Bradford and produced by Caleb Zeringue. Performances will run June 13–28.

The musical follows Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as he shares a prison cell with disgraced tech executive Sam Bankman-Fried and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. All three are portrayed as heightened versions of themselves, representing what the creators describe as symbolic failures in healthcare, tech, and Hollywood.

“Luigi the character, as we’ve written him, is dead serious about his thoughts and goals,” said Johnson to the SF Chronicle. “There’s something campy about the whole ‘good guy with a gun’ premise.”

Producer Zeringue said the idea for the show came from a conversation at SF Eagle, where Bradford noted the real-life incarceration overlap between Mangione, Bankman-Fried, and Combs.

In one scene, Luigi, played by Jonny Stein, sings about his regrets over buying hash browns from a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried (André Margatini) delivers a TED-style talk from his prison cell, echoing his recent real-world appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show.

“One of the central ideas we wanted to explore is this tendency for us to project meaning onto these types of figures,” said Bradford. “It’s a show that’s very much of Twitter right now.”

Bradford, Johnson, and Zeringue, who are all veterans of San Francisco’s stand-up comedy scene, stress that the show does not glorify violence or the alleged crimes of its characters. “We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions,” Bradford said.