In the days that followed the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December, his accused killer Luigi Mangione became something of a social media folk hero by those who applauded his apparent motivation to fight corporate greed.

The 26-year-old Mangione was dubbed “the hot assassin” on social media and more than 71,000 users of X responded to a UnitedHealth Group condolence message with laughing emojis. The platform was inundated with complaints about coverage denials and run-ins with one of the nation’s most profitable health insurance companies.

In short, it was a media circus. Much like those surrounding the convictions of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs for prostitution-related charges, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, for fraud.

A group of Bay Area standup comedians—including Stanford Health Policy PhD candidate Nova Bradford—were riffing one night on the real-life fluke that the three men were being held at the federal Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center at the same time.

Luigi: The Musical was born. The one-act prison comedy premiered at the Taylor Street Theater in San Francisco and is now being staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. What began as an idea scribbled on a napkin at a San Francisco club has become one of the year’s most talked-about independent theater debuts, garnering covering by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert—and FOX News.

The play’s premise has the three men placed in one cell, attempting to justify their crimes while awaiting their trials and plotting an escape. The satire skewers three cornerstones of American life—the broken health care system, the allure of Hollywood, and the influential tech industry—using comedy to ask deeper questions of the audience.

The writers insist the musical does not glorify violence—but interrogates it.

“Viral stories are simple stories—easily digestible, shareable, and morally simplistic. But when we accept the simplest version of a story, we risk overlooking more important questions,” said Bradford. “Luigi: The Musical brings those questions to the surface. Why did this case strike a chord with so many people? Why did Luigi become a folk hero to some, a terrorist to others? And what happens when people stop trusting their institutions, but still need someone to believe in?”

Mangione faces federal charges of murder, stalking, and firearms violations, along with murder and terror charges in New York and multiple felonies and misdemeanors in Pennsylvania. He has pleaded not guilty; if convicted he could be sentenced to death.

Compassion and Comedy

Bradford, a Knight-Hennessy Scholar pursuing her PhD in health policy, has her MSW in social work and aspires to reduce health disparities by developing evidence-based guidance for health systems and policymakers. She is a serious scholar, earning the Academy of Management’s Health Care Management division award for outstanding paper based on her dissertation, “Talking the Walk: The Legitimizing Language of Nonprofit Hospitals.”

Her other passions are standup comedy and staging guerrilla theater productions.

Some critics accuse the producers of exploiting a heinous crime, regardless of Mangione’s motivation to shed light on our broken health care system.

“How do you explore, honestly and with depth, what’s made an accused killer a folk hero to some while neither glorifying nor trivializing his alleged crime?” asked  San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak.

Bradford says she didn’t write the play “to throw a log on that fire.”

“Plenty of others are doing an excellent job of debating whether Luigi’s actions were justified or not, and frankly, I don’t have much to add to that conversation,” Bradford writes on her Substack blog. “What I can offer is a perspective on the true sources of dysfunction in American health care. As a PhD candidate in health policy at Stanford, I’ve spent years thinking about the (real and imagined) root causes of these problems.”

Bradford says Mangione speaks for many Americans disillusioned with their health care.

“Our health care system is the most expensive in the world, yet it fails to deliver proportionate improvements in health outcomes; our insurance model incentivizes inefficiency and profiteering; and our political system is deeply entangled with industry interests, making meaningful reform difficult,” Bradford writes.

“The health care crisis in America won't be solved by killing more CEOs, but neither will it be solved through passive acceptance of a broken system. Real change requires sustained civic engagement: enacting legislation, supporting candidates who prioritize meaningful reform, and staying informed about policy proposals that could address systemic issues.”