SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Late last year after health insurance CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down on a Manhattan street, the murder suspect quickly gripped the imagination of social media. Now there is "Luigi: The Musical," which is selling out in theaters and raising some questions. NPR's Fatima Al-Kassab went to see it in Scotland.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIANS: (As characters, singing) The cheapest room in Brooklyn's one that I know all too well.
FATIMA AL-KASSAB, BYLINE: Three comedians sing about a jail in Brooklyn...
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UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIANS: (As characters, singing) The cheapest room in Brooklyn is a cell.
AL-KASSAB: ...Where Luigi Mangione is held while he awaits trial.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIANS: (As characters, singing) In a 15-person unit that's for very famous males.
AL-KASSAB: In fact, at one point, Mangione had two very famous jail mates, Sean Diddy Combs, the hip-hop mogul turned convict, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto fraudster. This strange confluence of events inspired the writers to create a satirical musical that imagined what a meeting of the three would be like. Here's the moment in the play when Mangione first meets a nerdy Bankman-Fried.
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ANDRE MARGATINI: (As Sam Bankman-Fried) Oh, hey. I didn't realize I was getting a new cellmate. Welcome to prison.
JONNY STEIN: (As Luigi Mangione) Oh, wow, cool. Thanks. Happy to be here.
MARGATINI: (As Bankman-Fried) Really?
STEIN: (As Luigi Mangione) No.
AL-KASSAB: "Luigi: The Musical" first debuted in a scrappy little black box theater in San Francisco and recently played in Edinburgh at the city's Fringe Festival. The writers say they were interested in the media circus following the shooting. As soon as Mangione was named the suspect, many on social media celebrated him as a hero for the working class. On TikTok, a new legion of fans fawned over his shirtless photos and combed the internet for clues about his personality. These are TikTokkers SurgeonBergin, mrwilliamsprek and Fatana (ph).
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SURGEONBERGIN: What books was the United Healthcare suspect reading? This is his Goodreads list.
MRWILLIAMSPREK: Mama, I'm in love with a criminal. And this type of love isn't rational. It's physical.
FATANA: Luigi Mangione doesn't even know that he is, like, a national phenomenon right now.
AL-KASSAB: Which is why, co-writer Andre Margatini says, the play is less about the crime and more about the response to it. She also plays Sam Bankman-Fried.
MARGATINI: We were very interested not necessarily whether it was the right or wrong thing to do but kind of interrogating this cultural moment that was about kind of talking about how hot he was or talking about his sexuality.
CALEB ZERINGUE: Putting him on candles and memorabilia - right? - like saint candles. It's - you don't see that very often for something like this.
AL-KASSAB: That's Caleb Zeringue, another of the co-writers who also plays the prison guard. He says the media frenzy around Mangione is a key theme of the show, and it's something the musical very quickly found itself at the center of.
ZERINGUE: We did one interview with our local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, and suddenly my face was on "Laura Ingraham" within 72 hours.
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LAURA INGRAHAM: Murder is now supposed to be funny. OK.
AL-KASSAB: And it didn't just catch the attention of Fox News. Here's what Bill Maher said.
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BILL MAHER: The Luigi Mangione musical has opened.
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MAHER: There is a - this is not a joke. Luigi...
AL-KASSAB: Co-writers Zeringue says, actually, comedy is a good way to discuss complex topics.
ZERINGUE: Just because it's funny doesn't make it not serious, right? The audience - they've come up and told us about their own issues with health care afterwards, which has been - that was maybe the most moving moment I've heard for me, personally.
AL-KASSAB: And that's part of the obsession with Mangione. He's tapped into widespread frustration from those who feel victimized by the health care system. In the musical, the fictional Mangione also thinks seriously about whether killing someone...
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STEIN: (As Luigi Mangione, singing) Dear manifesto, I don't know who I am now.
AL-KASSAB: ...Has had any effect on the health care system.
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STEIN: (As Luigi Mangione, singing) I don't know what was worth it in the end.
AL-KASSAB: The show is coming back to San Francisco in September. Fatima Al-Kassab, NPR News, Edinburgh.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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