Fat Cat Killers

Tweet

The recent assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson played out with all the violent punctuation of a Greek tragedy—but it was the audience’s reaction that stole the spotlight. Not merely another scene in the grimly familiar tableau of politically charged gun violence, this episode shocked and split its viewers. Some recoiled in horror, others offered a slow, sardonic clap.

Thompson, cast in the role of corporate villain by a populace long brutalized by denied claims and bottom-line medicine, was no stranger to public scorn. Yet his abrupt and brutal exit—brought about, allegedly, by the youthful and photogenic Luigi Mangione—transformed the narrative from boardroom melodrama to full-blown mythmaking. Mangione, whose blend of brooding charm and lethal symbolism lit up TikTok feeds like a Broadway marquee, has become less a criminal than a cultural cipher—an anti-hero for the algorithm age. What emerges is not just a portrait of one man’s death, but a revelation of the audience itself: jaded, fractured, desperate for catharsis. That so many could cheer, meme, or sanctify an act of vigilante violence marks a chilling turn in the national script. In this theater, the line between justice and spectacle is not so much blurred as willfully erased.

Timing, as they say, is everything in comedy—and in revolution. In Fat Cat Killers, playwright Adam Szymkowicz delivers more than just a sharp-edged satire of corporate greed—he peels back the glossy veneer of big business to expose the raw, unsettling truths beneath. The play skewers the systemic exploitation of workers, the yawning chasm between executive privilege and employee precarity, and the emotional toll of soulless labor with biting wit and unflinching clarity. But while it aims its critique squarely at the power structures of late capitalism, it doesn’t let its would-be revolutionaries off the hook. The duo at the center of this kidnapping caper are hardly masterminds—they’re bumbling, beer-soaked amateurs whose half-baked plan unravels with comic ineptitude. Their antics, fueled more by a six-pack of Budweiser than principle, are both hilarious and harrowing, underscoring the play’s darker irony: that the oppressed, too, can be their own worst enemies. In the end, Fat Cat Killers wryly reminds us that vengeance rarely delivers the catharsis we imagine—and often leaves behind a bigger mess than the one we set out to clean up. Penned over a decade ago but newly staged in our era of soaring inequality and simmering rage, the play seems poised to strike a nerve.

The premise holds promise: when two recently “downsized” (read: unceremoniously axed) office workers, Steve (Christopher Lee) and Michael (David Carl) decide to kidnap their smug, high-flying CEO, the result is a biting satire that skewers the euphemistic doublespeak of the corporate world and lays bare the human cost behind boardroom decisions. This darkly comic caper unfolds as a giddy buddy non-rom-com that gallops through its 100-minute runtime with all the urgency of a lunch break PowerPoint.

Lee and Carl deliver game performances, with a script that purposely confuses aimlessness for absurdity and sentimentality for subversion. Imagine all iterations of Dumb and Dumber but acted by your spreadsheet-sleepy officemates and you’re close to the mark. In an age when audiences are primed for bold statements and sharper laughs, Fat Cat Killers arrives gift wrapped.

From the opening scene of Fat Cat Killers, it’s clear Steve isn’t exactly a mastermind. Interviewing for a management role, he breezily suggests to a higher-up that a higher salary might finally motivate him to do some actual work—a moment that plays less like satire than “true confessions.” At the local dive bar, his officemate Michael, ever the schemer, floats the idea of getting a friend, one of the “alleged” denizens of the local Apple Genius Bar, to hack the company payroll, a credential that apparently doubles as a criminal résumé in this universe.

What follows is a pivot from petty larceny to potential homicide, as Michael proposes that perhaps their ex-CEO—who recently took home a $10 million payday—might be more valuable dead than alive. Steve, with the moral resistance of wet cardboard, offers a half-shrug and tacit approval…as does probably half the audience. It’s perceived to be darkly funny, a descent into corporate vengeance with a wink and a nod.

Lee and Carl share a kind of inspired idiocy that, depending on your tolerance for chaos, may read as endearing or exhausting, but the exhaustion is from laughter. Carl steers this clown car with manic bravado, while Lee hangs his head out the metaphorical window, all wide-eyed bewilderment and golden-retriever enthusiasm. Their dynamic is undeniably committed, and we are counting those ransom dollars right along with them.

Steve, as played by Lee, is defined by chronic indecision—he utters the phrase “I don’t know” so very many times, a running gag character flaw that tips from comedic to tragic as he’s nudged, then shoved, into felonious territory by Carl’s gleefully unhinged brewski-toting psychopath.

Andrew Block’s direction falls into a happily dizzying middle ground: quite loose for effective absurdism, yet lacking that Swiss watch precision needed to land as true agitprop, but that’s okay as we are adding to our own lists of what we would do with that ransom money. Ironically, it’s the sound design—often an afterthought in productions like this—that emerges as the most disciplined element. Tony Lepore underscores key moments with original percussion that is, if nothing else, immensely purposeful. Scott Fetterman’s overambitious set, which manages to be both fussy and functional, triples as an office, a garage, and later, a courtroom.

The CEO Dave Russell—played with icy assurance by Philip Cruise—delivers the sharp corporate satire the play keeps flirting with. Cruise is pitch-perfect CEO casting: silver-haired, stone-faced, and radiating that quietly menacing aura of a man who does CrossFit at 5 A.M. and lays off departments before lunch. His presence injects a welcome jolt of tension and authority into the intentionally flailing narrative of the bumbling kidnappers.

Cruise inhabits Dave with the slick self-possession of someone who thinks entirely in bullet points and quarterly targets. So when he coolly negotiates a commission on his own ransom—refusing Steve and Michael’s pitiful offer and holding out for seven figures—it doesn’t feel absurd. It feels inevitable. In a world run by executives who profit off disaster, why wouldn’t the hostage walk away with the best deal? If Szymkowicz’s point is that shamelessness is the chief qualification for American leadership, then this scene alone proves he’s not wrong. It’s just a shame our two heroes never get to collect.

Fat Cat Killers exposes the layers that normally obscure what transforms office drones into would-be revolutionaries. Szymkowicz, willingly or not, takes us on a joyride to some searing social commentary. The mechanisms of exploitation are barefaced displayed and then we knowingly nod in agreement as good manners dissolve when confronted with irrational-bordering-on-rational violence.

A late monologue from Steve, in which he attempts to rally others to his cause, only perpetuates the reasoning behind a genuine fan base for Luigi Mangione. In a moment that’s meant to be provocative, Steve posits, “I mean, everyone steals paper and pens and paper clips, but when you steal lots of money, well, someone should kill you for it.” It’s clearly intended as a punchline, but by the time it lands, even the mildest of chuckles have long since evaporated. The audience is left detached, just as the insurance executive who is reduced to a chalk outline outside that Hilton hotel stockholders meeting Steve is undoubtedly mocking.

Arriving at a moment when political violence is becoming disturbingly mainstream, Fat Cat Killers is the searing, incisive flashlight we might need to help navigate this shadowy widening chasm of a profoundly absurd chapter in American history.

Fat Cat Killers (through May 17, 2025)

SparkPlug Productions in association with Thin Duke Productions and The Gene Frankel Theatre

The Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.onthestage.tickets/show/sparkplug-productions/

Running time: 100 minutes without an intermission