Transcript
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Mickey Jo (0:31)
There's certainly a lot that you can say about the musical adaptation of American Psycho. You can talk about the tone, the inherent challenge of bringing this story to the stage as a musical. But one thing that you cannot fault is the executions. Honestly, they are killing it on stage. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and when I wake up in the morning, I use a cleanser on my my face. Oh dear. It does occur to me that this would be the perfect opportunity to deliver the skincare routine that a couple of you have requested. Basically, the answer is just good lighting, I'll be honest. But I am sat here with you today to discuss the return of the musical adaptation of American Psycho to the Almeida Theatre in London where it first premiered over a decade ago. Yes, before heading to Broadway, the show was first seen by London audiences with then Doctor who alumnus Matt Susan Smith in the role of Patrick Bateman, a role made famous on screen by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation of the 1991 novel by Brett Easton Ellis. American Psycho, set in the 1980s and back when this show was first making its world premiere at the Islington venue over a decade ago. Who was in one of those audiences but a young Mickey Jo Theatre. Now it is early 2026 and the production is being brought back to the venue in something between a remounting and a revival by the now outgoing artistic director Rupert Gold. American Psycho, having been major production when he joined the venue as artistic director, so truly bookending his time at the Almeida. And so there is a considerable amount to reflect on here as well as the big picture ideas of, you know, does American Psycho work on stage as a musical? This gruesome story of 1980s Wall street apathy and horror. But also, how has the show changed and evolved since that original production and the subsequent Broadway misfire? And once more with a sold out run, how is it playing to audiences a decade later? Plenty for us to discuss today. As always, I will be sharing my opinions with you, but I would love to know yours. Share all of your thoughts about American Psycho the musical in the comments section down below. And of course, if you would like to stay up to date with the rest of my reviews, make sure that you're following me here on YouTube or on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about Patrick Bateman singing and dancing on stage in American Psycho. So for anybody not familiar with American Psycho, I recently read the novel in anticipation of seeing this musical on stage once more so I can tell you all about it. I haven't seen the Christian Bale led film adaptation, which I know is something of a crime. Admittedly, it's not as much of a crime as most of the stuff that he does in the film. American Psycho is set during this 1980s Wall street boom, and it depicts a psychotic yuppie named Patrick Bateman who by all accounts is obsess with image and trends and fashion and going to the right restaurants, the ones that are impossible to get a reservation to, and dating the most attractive, attainable women, regardless of whether or not you have any kind of emotional involvement in the relationship. Patrick's obsessed with making the correct styling choices and listening to the best music and owning the newest technology and having the most attractive business cards and constantly fixating on how his hair looks. You know, just once in a while. The man's relatable. However. However, in spite of this unending pursuit of what is hip and trendy and fashionable, there is still a void that cannot be filled, and in order to try and feel something, anything, he turns to a relentless killing spree, committing multiple graphic, senseless acts of random violence, murder, mutilation, the descriptions of which on the original pages of Brett Easton Ellis's novel are just torturous, conveying a level of utterly horrifying gore which Thankful the Musical never particularly aspires to. The plot of the book has been entirely condensed and streamlined. One element of the original novel is how relentlessly repetitious it all is. He goes to dinner again and again and again, and we get dozens upon dozens of food orders. We hear about dozens of different restaurants, dozens of different women who he dates, dozens of different business colleagues that he goes out with and is consistently bored by. We get perhaps hundreds of descriptions of the clothing that everyone is wearing, including himself. We get various pages of grisly murder and torture, as well as a handful of entire chapters. Reviewing the discography of the likes of Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and the News, I had no idea that Patrick Bateman was so into media criticism and while a key fixture of the novel is to convey the idea of this individual who is sleepwalking through a very cyclical existence and constantly turning to the same things in pursuit of contentment and satisfaction. Satisfaction both. The film, I believe in the stage musical extract the stronger moments of plot in order to form a more shapely narrative, one in which we are acquainted with Patrick and the other key figures in his life. We meet some of the immediate members of his family, we meet his closest friends and colleagues. We meet his girlfriend and the woman with whom he is having an affair, as well as his professional rival, Paul Owen, who, he has just learned, has been allocated the very important Fisher account, which sends Patrick into an immediate rage. This, in the music, being the thing that stirs him into his earliest acts of onstage violence, which, again, are neither as frequent nor as explicit as they are in the book. There is also something of a romantic subplot with Patrick's secretary Gene, who, he announces to the audience is presumably in love with him. In the musical, though I believe not. In the book, he to some extent believes that he might reciprocate that love, though he can't really be sure. The man is not particularly in touch with his own emotions, and by the end of the thing, he doesn't really have a strong sense of his own identity and reality. Talking about Patrick Bateman as an individual who only theoretically exists, the conclusion of the entire story is also fairly ambiguous, and we could talk about different interpretations of American Psycho. The musical doesn't necessarily contend with much of an explanation because this entire adaptation is less meaningful than it is stylish. And what's very interesting is I think the whole thing balances on the assumption that the majority of the audience will already have preconceptions about American Psycho and Patrick Bateman as a character. There isn't as much heavy lifting in the material to explain this complicated individual as you would expect there to be if he was being freshly introduced. It feels very reliant on the fact that we already know who he is and what he's up to and what's going to happen, to some extent. And so there is this familiar quality as Patrick Bateman arrives at the beginning of the show elevated from the substage, delivering this familiar monologue about his morning routine. And the reaction from the audience is almost tantamount to a sort of a chuckle of recognition. The entire show and the presentation of Patrick Bateman in these moments of exposition, I think steers perilously close to the world of parody. It almost feels like a deliberately comic American Psycho musical at times. The thing that keeps it from going over the edge is this tone, which is only one part campy to several more parts chilling, but largely just stylish, which is the principle adjective with which I would describe this show. It's a stylish adaptation of American Psycho that doesn't busy itself with an awful lot of storytelling or a particularly hefty dose of meaning. At a time when, once again, the world is experiencing mass social division and asking difficult questions about the ethics of capitalism and wading, I think, through a real crisis of empathy, it does feel as though a reinvigorated version of American Psycho brought to the stage in 2026 ought to have a little bit more to say about a char like Patrick Bateman and his peers, rather than simply allowing the audience to giggle at their very vacuous, callous worldviews. And there evidently is some level of fondness for this production from Rupert Gold. Otherwise, you know, it's a curious choice to conclude his very impressive tenure as the artistic director of the Almeida, and I was wondering in the moments before it began whether this would be considerably more successful because perhaps the original was in some ways ahead of its time, even though so much of it is nostalgic. And while I don't remember every detail of my first visit to the show more than a decade ago, the feeling that I merged with afterwards was much the same. I was impressed by the production, both the creative choices and the performances. But like an expensive bottle of champagne yet to be opened the most, I really was.