The TUNEabomber, an explosive musical comedy
“It makes us sound like alcoholics,” said theater actor John Lampe. “But I was drunk one night and I texted Michael from a bar. I said, ‘What if the Unabomber really wanted to be a singer called the TUNEabomber?’”
Lampe and Michael Wysong starred as domestic terrorist Theodore Kaczynski and his lawyer in their explosive Unabomber-inspired two-man musical comedy, “The TUNEabomber,” on Sunday, Nov. 2, at the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles.
Kaczynski earned the name Unabomber after mailing a bomb to Northwestern University in 1978 and placing an explosive on an American Airlines flight in 1979, according to the FBI website.
Kaczynski mailed bombs for a period of 17 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others. The domestic terrorist pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the bombings and served multiple life sentences at a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., until his suicide in June 2023.
“The TUNEabomber” is set at a fictional parole board hearing, where Lampe portrays Kaczynski as he attempts to prove he’s a reformed man with a passion for theater. “His crimes are heinous, but what is not the point of prison but rehabilitation,” Lampe said during the opening of the show.
Wysong, the co-creator, performs as Kaczynski’s lawyer while playing the piano as Lampe sings the Unabomber’s life story. According to the creators, almost all of it is true — except for the parts about theater and wanting to be the next Bob Fosse.
Kaczynski attended Harvard at the age of 16, where he participated in the CIA’s illegal human experimentation program, MK-Ultra, according to a 2018 Freedom of Information Act request. A considerable amount of circumstantial evidence suggests the university’s lead researcher, Dr. Henry Murray, performed disturbing and ethically indefensible stress tests on the Unabomber and 21 other undergraduates, the FoIA request states.
He earned his doctorate in mathematics and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming a recluse in Montana at 30 years old. He started mailing bombs seven years later because of what he described as technology’s impact on humans and the environment, according to his manifesto.
People at the show weren’t oblivious to the Unabomber’s crimes; however, they kept an open mind while watching the musical. “Kaczynski is such an oddball, such an eccentric character, that maybe they’re making more fun of him than the victims,” said Boaz Sobrado, a man who just moved to Los Angeles from Budapest.
Lampe portrays Kaczynski as an ill-tempered, narcissistic loon who explodes into song and costumed dances — or sudden bursts of foul-mouthed anger.
“It was very important to us that we not make fun of the victims,” Wysong said. “It was like, how can we make sure that we’re laughing at Ted?”
Wysong plays the piano as an anxious — and by the end, bloodied — wreck who receives beatings, verbal lashings, and exploding props, as he indulges the Unabomber, while Lampe sings about being a misunderstood genius who hates his brother’s wife.
People threw their arms up as they laughed, falling out of their chairs. Others stomped their feet and curled into balls, holding their stomachs as their faces turned tomato red.
Audience members shouted along with the Unabomber and entertained his delusions throughout the show. “It was very contrast from the serious nature of what he actually did,” said Long Beach resident Loya Kadera, who dons a pipe bomb tattoo on his bicep. “It made it funny.”
Still, at the end of the musical, the parole board denied his release from prison.
People praised the performance afterward, swarming the merchandise table and thanking the actors as they left. “Beautiful singing, beautiful writing,” said L.A. County resident Curtis Bunnett.
Kaczynski lived in prison for over 20 years, with little communication to the outside world, before his suicide. Yet, he has become more relevant as technology advances.
“If, in a hundred years from now, no one’s talking about Ted Kaczynski, it means that we live in a world that is not quite the depressive, miserable vision that Kaczynski had.
However, if a hundred years from now it turns out we live in some sort of environmental climate catastrophe where we’re all slaves to machines, maybe he’ll have a significant legacy — where all things went wrong,” Sobrado said.