Luigi: The Musical, a satire inspired by the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has revealed the complete cast for its return to\u00a0The Green Room 42, running November 9-14.<\/p>\n
The show has been retooled, with this reading featuring\u00a0Colin LeMoine<\/a> (Hadestown, Wicked, Hello Dolly) as Luigi Mangione, Kyle Ramar Freeman<\/a> (The Wiz, Titanique, Strange Loop) as The Guard, Taylor Colleton<\/a> (Water For Elephants) as Diddy, and writer Andre Margatini as Sam Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n This follows a sold-out run last year in San Francisco, where the musical garnered national attention, including a New York Times review<\/a> that said, “If you\u2019re at all familiar with the contentious online discourse about Mr. Mangione, here you\u2019ll find it poured into a body to dance across the jailhouse floor, tapping around the basic moral questions posed by his celebrity.” The musical was also performed last year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.<\/p>\n Luigi is created by Nova Bradford; with music by Arielle Johnson; lyrics by Johnson and Bradford; and book by Bradford, Johnson, Margatini, and Caleb Zeringue. It was inspired by the real incident where Mangioni, Sean Combs<\/a>, and Sam Bankman-Fried were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at the same time\u2014Combs is currently imprisoned on allegations of sexual misconduct, and Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud.<\/p>\n According to press notes: “Luigi: the Musical doesn’t glorify violence, it interrogates it. Beneath the absurdity and punchlines … lies a serious critique of how violence is packaged and consumed in American media.”<\/p>\n This isn’t the first time that real-life killers have been portrayed in musical theatre\u2014after all, Stephen Sondheim<\/a> wrote an entire musical about historical presidential assassins, and the story of outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was also turned into a Broadway show. <\/p>\n But it is rarer for a musical to dramatize events that are still currently ongoing. Federal prosecutors initially sought the death penalty for Mangione, which has been dismissed. Mangioni currently faces state and federal charges, including for second-degree murder and stalking, which comes with the possibility of life in prison; he’s pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n