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About a mile and a half from where Luigi Mangione (allegedly) murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and a schlep from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where the (alleged) assassin is being held as he awaits state and federal trials, Luigi: The Musical finished its six-night New York City run at The Green Room 42 in the YOTEL New York Times Square.

I would have skipped Luigi — I’d prefer a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins instead — but when the likes of Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert start promoting a show that mentions “MILFs and Bottoms for Luigi,” I figure I should go.

My plan was to interview audience members about the increasing tide of political violence in America — I imagined they’d have revealing opinions to share, given that they’d taken time out of their summers to see a show that, according to its press release, “doesn’t glorify violence, it interrogates it.”

Personally, I can’t think of a more appropriate time to “interrogate” violence — since the murder of Charlie Kirk, we’ve seen assassination attempts on Sam Altman, multiple “security incidents” involving President Trump (both foreign and domestic), and Bluesky musings about a world without Elon Musk.

But what I found at the Luigi musical was less “interrogation” and more… applause.

I missed opening night, but the night I went was sold out. The audience looked like your regular mix of off-Broadway theater fans. (Translation: I’ll bet I was the only one who hadn’t seen Heated Rivalry.)

Although the title of the show is Luigi: The Musical, the title character shares the stage with two other high-profile convicts — Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried — who were held in the same unit as Luigi for three months. Thus the inspiration for Luigi creator Nova Bradford (who, by day, works as a “health systems researcher” at Stanford). She wondered: what if the respective assassin, crypto fraudster, and hip-hop mogul / baby oil aficionado hung out behind bars? (And of course, make it “queer”: Sam’s played by a they/he; Diddy’s a blacktress in a doo-rag.)

Before the show, I chatted up a bloke from New Zealand who’d had trouble getting rid of an extra ticket. His friends had declined because the show seemed like it was “glamorizing a guy who committed murder in cold blood.”

“That’s not a great thing,” he agreed, but he was “very interested to see how tastefully it’s done.”

“The whole topic was so absurd that I just had to go,” an elderly woman told me. Her friend had brought her along. “I’ve been following the story [of Brian Thompson’s murder]. I’ve been finding it so intriguing,” she said. “I have mixed feelings about it. I think to kill anybody is unfair, but I understand the medical industry is so terrible and getting worse.”

This is the moral quandary I was expecting to hear. After Thompson’s murder, I heard it everywhere. I can’t count the number of politicians who took to social media and the press with some version of Chris Rock’s bit, “O.J., I Understand.” Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far.” (She walked back that statement, but we understood what she was getting at.) Senator Bernie Sanders called the murder “outrageous” and “unacceptable” with the caveat that he understood it, too. “This is not to say that an act of violence is justified,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on the steps of the Capitol, “but I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.”

Politicians were willing to show a nuanced understanding of an act of murder, but none were willing to take responsibility for the policies that had helped create this “violent” healthcare industry in the first place. Remember: Bernie Sanders voted “yes” to the Affordable Care Act, which accelerated corporate consolidation in healthcare (after it passed, independent doctors merged with hospitals so they could afford to keep up with ACA’s reporting requirements). I totally understand, though: Bernie and AOC would rather a target be on every healthcare CEO’s back than on their own.

However, healthcare policy wasn’t really top of mind that night.

Most people were just saying Luigi is hot.

“I’m not going to say I’m one of those fanatics standing in line at dawn to get in [the courthouse],” the elderly woman assures me. “I know there are a lot of young women who are crazy about him. [Luigi’s] very good-looking.”

(Obviously, it’s just not the same when an uggo pops someone important. Charlie Kirk’s assassin was so ugly everyone preferred to invent conspiracy theories about Israel instead of facing the real killer… and remember John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan to get Jodie Foster to fall in love with him? It didn’t work, because he wasn’t attractive and Jodie Foster’s gay.)

Speaking of “young women who are crazy about him,” I scoped out the cabaret in search of Luigi groupies who do stand in line at dawn to get into the courthouse — and spotted a familiar brunette with goth bangs. I recognized her from a piece in the New York Post about a trio of Luigi fangirls who’d named themselves “Mangionistas.” They’d camped out at the courthouse before pre-trial hearings and eventually earned press passes. One of them, Lena Weissbrot, called Thompson a “terrorist” whose crimes rivaled Osama bin Laden’s, and said his “children are better off without him.”

And there she was, at the show. I said hi.

“Because I’m so invested in the case,” Lena told me. “I guess I was just curious to see how much research [went into this play] — how much it matches my conception of Luigi based on examining his digital footprint and following the case. Or if it’s just going to be like, a joke thing.”

While most of the theatergoers I met waffled over the moral implications of political violence, Lena was direct. “On December 4th,” she said, “seeing the video camera [footage] of the shooting, it kind of brought me out of despair, because I’d been pretty upset about the health insurance industry… So I viewed it as a heroic act.”

I asked if Luigi pleading not guilty takes away from his “heroism.”

“It’d be way cooler if he got away with it,” she said. “It would be pretty empowering to find out that under the age of mass surveillance, you can still get away with something.”

Well, if the show is any indication, the only way Luigi gets away with it is via jailbreak.

During the show, after Luigi announced that he was being held against his will for the alleged murder of a CEO, the audience erupted in applause. Luigi then lamented ordering hash browns at McDonald’s — a reference to his capture — but the joke was overshadowed by a song: “Deny, Delay, Defend” (a reference to engravings found on bullet casings at the scene).

Later, while incarcerated, Luigi read letters from victims denied care and thrust into medical bankruptcy. The letters were presumably fictional, but lacked irony or humor — aside from one package he received containing panties. Even the prison guard in the show had cancer and sang about being denied treatment! This was all before said guard handed Luigi his gun and helped him escape!

“Now get out there and do the Lord’s work,” the guard commanded Mr. Mangione.

After the show, I ended up in the YOTEL lobby talking with two poli-sci students from NYU: one of them was white and wearing a dress with butterfly print, the other Latina.

“A lot of [the fixation on Luigi] has to do with his whiteness,” the white student told me. “I feel like he’d be covered very differently if he wasn’t objectively attractive.”

“And also a person of color,” the Latina student said, “or low-income.”

The white student agreed. “He’s a hot, rich boy with great cheekbones,” she said. “And I think there’s a kind of romance to that.”

“I’m not pro political violence,” she continued — though “I think honestly for [violence] to be effective, it has to target an executive.” She then introduced me to the anarchist concept of “propaganda by the deed,” wherein a dramatic violent act communicates a political message more powerfully than a speech or Bluseky post.

Later, I caught up with Lena. She was enjoying a cocktail with a blonde from Australia who was writing a book about Luigi.

Lena’s now bicoastal for Luigi, she explained to me, splitting time between LA (where she lives) and NYC. And she liked the show. “I like that they portrayed him as a hero,” she said. “In the first song, he referred to himself as a martyr. And I think that’s how most Americans view him.”

I asked her about politicians who’ve passed healthcare policy. Should they be scared of the mob, too? Or are we only targeting CEOs?

“Whoever did this,” Lena responded — a coy reference to Luigi’s “not guilty” plea — “sacrificed their life to give us leverage. I hope this does become a reckoning that leads to us getting healthcare. The people in power need to be scared. And they’re not going to respond to anything else. They need to know that we’re angry — and that it’s not even a radical opinion. I can talk about this shit casually at work.”

Plus, he’s hot. “Having seen Luigi in person,” Lena told me, “Luigi’s kind of the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life.” The actor who played him, Mike Cefalo, was “close enough,” she explained — the hair was “spot on,” though, she admits, he could have had a “stronger jaw.”

And that’s why, be it musical theater or assassination theater, it all comes down to casting.

***

Lou Perez is a comedian and author of That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.

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Luigi Mangione’s Curtain Call: The Pop Culture Assassin Prince Takes The Stage