American Psycho Review: Yuppies Making a Killing Offers a Chilling Origin Story for Our Corrupt Times
Almeida theatre, London – In a bloody, brilliant, and full-circle moment, Rupert Goold bows out as artistic director of the Almeida with a timely revival of the musical he first staged here in 2013. This production of American Psycho delves into the dark world of Patrick Bateman, a narcissistic banker from Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 masterpiece, and serves as a chilling origin story for our contemporary era of corruption.
The World of Yuppies and Wall Street Hedonism
The term "yuppie" evokes images of shoulder pads, Filofaxes, and liquid lunches, a realm that Bateman inhabits with hedonistic abandon. As a creature of Wall Street's heyday, he blings in designer-wear while swinging his axe at high-end escorts and the homeless. Goold's decision to resurrect this musical adaptation is not without risk, as singing yuppies in boxy suits and Ralph Lauren underwear might seem passé. However, the satire is amped to ten, licking its lips as it sends up the 1980s without spiraling into kitsch.
Instead, our modern world of toxic masculinity, Trumpian capitalism, and Insta-fuelled solipsism slowly and chillingly creeps out of the narrative. This was the first show Goold staged after taking over the Almeida theatre, originally starring Matt Smith and reaching Broadway, and now it becomes his swan song, marking a bloody, brilliant, full circle in his tenure.
Performance and Characterisation
Arty Froushan, as Patrick Bateman, delivers an impressive performance that differs from Christian Bale's sinister film portrayal. Froushan's preppy boy-next-door demeanor gradually turns lunatic, with his shirt slicked with sweat by the end, showcasing his range after his lead role in The Line of Beauty at the same theatre. Anastasia Martin, as Bateman's earnest PA and one of the few likable characters, brings a sorrowful depth to her part of a woman painfully in love with her boss.
Music and Satire
Duncan Sheik's score features one great electro-synth number after another, with a razor-sharp book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Songs like Cards capture the absurd one-upmanship of Bateman's banker bros, while You Are What You Wear, sung by his east coast princess fiancée Evelyn (Emily Barber) among others, name-drops period fashion labels with undisguised shallowness. The witty book and lyrics take us back to the fetishisation of fine dining, with upscale dishes involving sliced mango, sushi, and sun-dried tomatoes that now sound laughably basic.
Alongside original songs, there are excellently performed blasts from the past, such as The Human League's Don't You Want Me with an aggressively tinny sound and Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight, which contains menace and melodrama. A zombie-style ensemble delivers superb singing, dancing, writhing, and bouncing in aerobics gear, appearing robotic or plastic, never quite human, with gloriously arch choreography by Lynne Page.
Design and Themes
Es Devlin's fleet set design transforms nightclubs into bedrooms and hideous mounds of twitching bodies, while Jon Clark's Stringfellows-style lighting and Finn Ross's projections give off a luminous, hallucinatory quality, insinuating Bateman's unreliable reality. The seeds of corruption in our world are all found here: Trump is Bateman's hero and makes a brief appearance, Epstein is name-checked, and the unspoken analogy between bankers and psychopaths bears resonance.
Bateman deals in mergers and acquisitions—or is it "murders and executions?"—and although he is a product of the 1980s, the greed of his peers lays the ground for economic crashes to come, their nihilistic, coke-snorting hedonism prefiguring dramas like Industry. The unreliable narration of the book, which renders Bateman a fantasist, gives way to metaphor more clearly here: he is an abstraction, as he tells us himself. He may not be out there cutting up women, but his darkness and abandonment of hope sit within all of us.
At the Almeida theatre, London, until 14 March, this revival offers a powerful commentary on contemporary societal ills through the lens of a classic tale.
