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Luigi Mangione is accused of murdering United Health CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood on a Manhattan street on December 4th, 2024. Five months later, Mangione’s case is slowly winding through the legal system, with a court date still months away. His story, however, is ready to be told as a musical show in California. The hour-long show, “Luigi the Musical”, will have a two-week run starting June 13th in San Francisco’s Taylor Street Theatre; billed as “a story of love, murder and hash browns”, every performance is already sold out.
Could the macabre Luigi Mangione life story actually find its footing on Broadway some day? Natalie Migliore went to the corner of 6th Avenue and 54th Street- right around the corner from the scene of the crime- and asked people for 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program if they thought the musical could make it on the Great White Way- or if it even belongs there in the first place.
The majority of people Migliore talked to unreservedly said no. One man summed up why he thought not this way: “I feel like they’re using the situation as a publicity stunt. It’s not to be taken seriously at all. A man was murdered literally right here. It’s pretty crazy. I work close by, so I pass it every day. I think about it pretty often.”
Migliore did find one woman who seemed to support Mangione: “I think the real question [that] should be answered [is] why CEOs like the one that was murdered is even allowed to go about doing horrendous things like rip off the people that he’s supposed to be representing, so I think that’s a bigger question to ask.”
But one man dismissed the idea of the Mangione musical by saying in a manner-of-fact tone that we’ve seen this before: “It will always be fans for good and bad. I’ve seen, you know, mass murderers and people who follow it. So, whether it’s good or bad, you’re going to have fans for it, and if some people can make money off it, that’s how it works in a capitalist society.”
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