American Psycho
This review is from 2013. American Psycho returns reworked for 2026 with a completely new cast led by Arty Froushan as Patrick Bateman.
You would think playing a murderous American yuppie with a rock-hard torso and a feather-soft grip on reality would be just the ticket for banishing the memory of loveable teatime alien The Doctor. But Matt Smith leaves surprisingly little impression as psychopathic stockbroker Patrick Bateman in this musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s social satire ‘American Psycho’. And that is the brilliance of his performance.
Bateman is a hollow man, an identikit Wall Street hotshot, frequently mistaken for other Wall Street hotshots, who judges himself by the fractional material differences between him and his Wall Street hotshot peers. Bateman is on stage almost constantly in Rupert Goold’s production, yet Smith plays him as a strange void.
His monotone voice, impassive features and perfectly toned physique are a constant deadpan, and he sings with the flat tones of the New Romantics, whose soaring electro-pop Duncan Sheik’s score apes. Smith is constantly in the foreground, but though his natural charisma draws us in, the eye slides off him. We see why Bateman is losing his marbles: his perfect Manhattan life is a prison, his only escape is to (apparently) start butchering people.
‘American Psycho’ is enormous fun. Sheik’s songs vary in hummability, but they’re generally hilarious, characters with no soul singing trashy, narcissistic pop...