Jul 13
‘Luigi the Musical’ – The popular yet panned play satirizes a headline crime
Jim Provenzano READ TIME: 2 MIN.
When you get an offer for a press ticket to the sold-out, most controversial, most talked-about musical in town, and it’s only a few blocks walk away, how can you turn it down?
Thus, I found myself at The Independent, one my favorite music nightclubs, waiting with an enthusiastic crowd for the new staging of “Luigi the Musical,” the 90-minute one-act that satirizes the fate of alleged healthcare CEO murderer Luigi Mangione, and his media-frenzied imprisonment. Appropriately, announcements of the musical got a similar media frenzy a while back.
The show was preceded by a brief yet funny set by standup comic Yi Ren. After an extended announcement of the program notes defining satire, and relieving the show of any liability, we meet Luigi, and then his cellmates, who unfortunately turn out to be notorious orgy master and musician P. Diddy (Janeé Lucas), and crypto finance fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried (André Margatini).
The fact that these three men are now actually in prison in the same Brooklyn jail was the inspiration for co-playwrights Nova Bradford, Caleb Zeringue (who also plays a prison guard and is a company producer), Arielle Johnson and André Margatini (SBF).
In this fictional version, the three characters argue over their merits, claims to fame, and eventually conspire (ineptly) to escape the prison.
With a cast of four, including a single electric keyboard player, the musical takes on an amateur style that is hopefully deliberate, and clearly a meta bit of self-parody while being a parody. It’s like a high school play out of control. Johnson and Bradford’s songs are by no means Sondheim “Assassins” level, but clever nonetheless, particularly the repeated refrains of “Dear Manifesto,” sung by Jonny Stein as Luigi.
Whatever weaknesses the joke-filled script has, as the lead, Stein carries the show with his great singing, underplayed comic timing, and hunky good looks.
Despite some mic problems and starting a bit late, the company will hopefully get more comfortable in the new venue. Fans seem to enjoy it, including one loudmouthed woman who for a while thought the show deserved her call-and-response outbursts. It didn’t, yet the cast dealt with her amicably.
Yet, being now staged in a nightclub gives the show an amplified comic edge that perhaps the small theatrical premiere at the Taylor Street Theater didn’t have. The audience responded enthusiastically to the multiple gay punchlines and innuendo, as well as many San Francisco-related one-liners.
Back to the story, what little there is. Asked by Luigi to help him escape, the Guard eventually complies, sharing his own healthcare woes, abruptly followed by some amusing homoerotic tension between the two, building to a campy dance duet in “Keys to my Heart.”
Amid a Deux ex Machina finale, Luigi switches gears in the finale to a maniacal epiphany (“Peace on Earth”), graced by peeling off his T-shirt to show his gorgeous upper torso amid ‘Carrie White’-style blood-red lighting.
It’s silly, it’s uneven, and it probes into contemporary issues, then flips back-and-forth to schtick like a “South Park” episode. Here’s hoping the cast continues to have a good time and books more productions, because audiences clearly enjoy it, despite critics panning it for being “too soon,” “grotesque,” or too “controversial.” Also, the cast and production team are mostly LGBTQ.
Note; if you do get tickets at The Independent, don’t sit house-right. For some reason, it seems half the audience trod back and forth to and from the restrooms through the show.
