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SAN FRANCISCO – Backstage before Monday\u2019s performance of \u201cLuigi: The Musical,\u201d actor Caleb Zeringue cracked a joke about how his castmate who plays the title role has to skip the show\u2019s European debut because such a trip could cost him his health insurance.<\/p>\n
The barb strikes at one of the key themes in the show about alleged murderer Luigi Mangione: The whims of the U.S. health care system can drive people to do drastic things with fatal outcomes.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. <\/a><\/p>\n The lead actor, Jonny Stein, gets his health coverage through his day job teaching high school math in San Francisco. He said his principal denied his request to skip the first week of school so that he could perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival starting Tuesday, so another actor will be stepping in.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because something\u2019s funny, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not serious,\u201d said Zeringue, dressed as a prison guard, before Stein ducked out of the green room to slip into his bright orange jumpsuit.<\/p>\n Six months before this musical debuted in June, Mangione hit a nerve with the American public. Immediately after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December, merchandise like pint glasses and baseball caps popped up carrying the phrase \u201cDeny, Defend, Depose,\u201d the words emblazoned on ammunition casings found near where he was shot in Midtown Manhattan. After the then-26-year-old Mangione was arrested came the uncomfortable memes on social media with commentary on his appearance.<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s become a lightning rod for thinkpieces, viral TikToks, cult fandom and hand-wringing about the state of American medicine and making light of a murder case. And part of the debate over what Mangione represents is playing out in a scrappy musical.<\/p>\n When Nova Bradford, the show\u2019s 31-year-old director who also wrote it with a group of fellow Bay Area comedians, read that Mangione was being held in the same Brooklyn jail as disgraced crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and music mogul Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs, she thought the situation was ripe for satire.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such a strange group of people to be in the same place at the same time. They\u2019re all high profile but from completely different worlds,\u201d Bradford said in a phone interview. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine them being in the same room other than a prison cell.\u201d<\/p>\n Their worlds of tech and finance, entertainment and health care have all suffered a loss of public trust, Bradford said, through the Great Recession, Facebook\u2019s Cambridge Analytica scandal, the #MeToo era, the opioid crisis and more.<\/p>\n When people see institutions failing, Bradford said, they\u2019re drawn to alternatives like new age healers on Instagram or biohacker bros in Silicon Valley – maybe even a vigilante. \u201cBut ultimately these people don\u2019t provide real answers, just like the institutions that are failing,\u201d said Bradford.<\/p>\n That disenchantment was evident at Monday night\u2019s sold-out \u201cLuigi\u201d show at the Independent, where an attendee was spotted in a Luigi T-shirt and the audience of around 200 roared in laughter as Bankman-Fried (Andr\u00e9 Margatini) sang about being a \u201cBay Area baby,\u201d growing up where it\u2019s normal to fake it till you make it and about how \u201cyou gotta have a little fraud in your company.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the show, a 31-year-old accountant in the audience proclaimed the show was made for people like her, a former theater kid and self-described \u201cHamilton liberal\u201d who now considers herself a \u201cLuigi leftist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that I believe in violence against the individual,\u201d Kathleen Koomen said. \u201cBut I do believe that a state that monopolizes violence begets violence, and I think Luigi represents that.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephanie Allen, a 50-year-old mortgage broker who\u2019d traveled from Napa to see the show, was intrigued by the satirical take on a serious subject. The United States \u201cis one of the richest countries in the world,\u201d Allen noted. She dropped an expletive when describing how she feels about the lack of affordable health care, adding: \u201cWhy is this happening?\u201d<\/p>\n The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s review says the production is \u201cthe most talked-about play in S.F. It\u2019s also terrible.\u201d The writer is among several who\u2019ve suggested it might be too soon to tackle Mangione\u2019s case onstage, earnestly asking: \u201cHow do you explore, honestly and with depth, what\u2019s made an accused killer a folk hero to some while neither glorifying nor trivializing his alleged crime?\u201d<\/p>\n The show opens with disclaimer reminding attendees not to take what is about to unfold too seriously. It\u2019s satire and such speech is protected by the First Amendment, a disembodied voice says, spurring anxious chuckles from the crowd.<\/p>\n The characters\u2019 varied worlds is played for laughs, conflict and, ultimately, a few notes of harmony. The show points out that Bankman-Fried and Diddy (Jane\u00e9 Lucas) are both businessmen who love money and the spotlight. Luigi, the relative nobody, becomes a kind of peacemaker between the two famous men. He\u2019s also the only one getting fan mail while in prison, with fictional yet relatable tales of sickness, pain and denied health-care claims.<\/p>\n Sure, the actors\u2019 voices and dance moves aren\u2019t the smoothest. The between-act set changes are a little clumsy. Every show, a different actor fumbles a handful of lines, Zeringue admitted.<\/p>\n But the production\u2019s amateur nature is also the source of its charm. The bumbling feels appropriate when lampooning these men in various stages of felony cases. With such messy muses, why not lean into the improv of it all?<\/p>\n Bradford cited \u201cChicago\u201d as one of her influences, as it\u2019s another true-crime satire set in a prison, as well as \u201cAvenue Q\u201d and \u201cBook of Mormon,\u201d two boundary-pushing musicals that were formative in her upbringing as a theater kid in Colorado. The show joins a long line of musicals about controversial real-life characters, ranging from more serious, like \u201cHamilton\u201d and \u201cEvita,\u201d to the more gimmicky, like \u201cGwyneth Goes Skiing\u201d and TV\u2019s \u201cPrince Andrew: The Musical.\u201d<\/p>\n Bradford finds her show draws younger crowds than the typical musical. And by building a production around three very different characters, \u201cwe\u2019re able to have jokes \u2026 that appeal to audiences who have different media they\u2019re familiar with, and different comedy preferences,\u201d said Bradford, who\u2019s in talks to bring \u201cLuigi\u201d to Los Angeles and New York after Edinburgh.<\/p>\n Eve Hroziencik is one of those young theatergoers. The 23-year-old brought her dad along as a birthday gift. Her father, Mike, who works as a criminal defense lawyer in nearby Burlingame, said he thought the show was \u201chilarious and ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n Hroziencik said \u201cLuigi\u201d made her \u201chopeful\u201d about the future because the show\u2019s \u201chumor and absurdity makes all the misery of the world a little more bearable.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Content<\/p>\n Ukraine scrambles to roll back Russian eastern advance as summit takes place<\/a><\/p>\n Her dogs kept dying, and she got cancer. Then they tested her water.<\/a><\/p>\n