American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classic
During Rupert Goold’s “gilded” 13-year tenure at the Almeida Theatre, in north London, it has staged 72 shows, 14 of which have transferred to the West End, and 11 to Broadway. In that time, the powerhouse venue has also bagged 21 Oliviers, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph, for plays including Mike Bartlett’s verse-drama “King Charles III” and James Graham’s “Ink”. It is quite a legacy for Goold – the “most exciting director of his generation” – who is now heading south of the river to take over at the Old Vic.
For his swansong in Islington, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, Goold has restaged his debut production: an all-singing, all-dancing musical adaptation of “American Psycho”, Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel about a murderous Wall Street banker. In a typically slick, visually thrilling evening, the dark satire is “amped to ten” as it “sends up” 1980s yuppy culture. But the show “never spirals into kitsch, and our contemporary world of toxic masculinity, Trumpian capitalism and Insta-fuelled solipsism slowly, chillingly, creeps out of it”. Arty Froushan impresses as Patrick Bateman, the preppy boy-next-door who “turns gradually lunatic” (while being a lot less sinister than Christian Bale in the film version). Duncan Sheik’s score consists of “one great electrosynth number after another”, and there’s a “razor-sharp book” by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.
The “catwalk-style stage” works brilliantly, said Alex Wood on What’s on Stage, especially for “dance-heavy moments”. Combined with imaginative use of video projections and often “garishly overwrought” lighting, like a “nightmarish 1980s music video”, the effect is “hypnotic”.
For all the “demonic razzle dazzle”, “American Psycho” is a “deadpan show with a downbeat story that sometimes feels in conflict with the maximalist nature of musical theatre”, said Andrzej Lukowski on Time Out. I am not sure it was really worth reviving, said Clive Davis in The Times. Sure, this production is slick and polished, but it hasn’t a lot to say. Watching it is “an oddly bloodless exercise in nostalgia, like being forced to sit through a re-run of ‘9½ Weeks’”.
Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 14 March.