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American Psycho dir. by Rupert Goold (review)

Does every surface need to be redeemed by hidden depths? The US premiere of American Psycho, a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel and conspicuously influenced by the 2000 movie version, grapples with this question in explicitly gory detail. Yet, unlike its notoriously ambiguous source material, this Broadway production, transferred from London, takes great pains to position itself unequivocally as a critique of the world it imitates. The musical, set in 1989, follows one year in the life of Patrick Bateman (Benjamin Walker), an investment banker who lives and kills in New York City. This Wall Street Everyman is an amalgam of surfaces, composed largely of elite brand names, designer clothes, ultramodern gadgets, and prescription drugs. Patrick’s portentous reference to a “nameless feeling” inside alerts the audience within the first few minutes of the performance that there is more to him than meets the eye, asking us to prospect for deposits of depth behind his carefully curated facade. This is not an uncommon strategy for the opening of an anti-hero musical (for example, Sweeney Todd, Wicked). Yet, American Psycho’s project is not so much to dispel misconceptions about a character’s alleged sociopathy as to interrogate cultural assumptions of an obligatory inner self, always distinct from and somehow more authentic than one’s public persona.