ajhlovestheatre

AMERICAN PSYCHO

Music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik

Book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa 

based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis

directed by Rupert Goold

Almeida Theatre, London – until 21 March 2026

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/american-psycho-2026/

You can’t accuse the Almeida’s outgoing artistic director Rupert Goold (he leaves in the autumn to take up the reins at the Old Vic from Matthew Warchus) of resting on his laurels. His 2013 musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ gory, controversial novel American Psycho was an absolute smash hit (well ok, not on Broadway where it tanked after less than three months) but it was the hottest ticket in London town during the original run starring a ripped, wittily unreadable Matt Smith. Surely it must have been tempting to repeat the winning formula but this 2026 iteration is no carbon copy of the first version, despite using the same creative team. 

The musical has been streamlined, brought into sharper focus and almost completely restaged. There are new songs (including the belting, haunting opener ‘Selling Out’ created for the New York production), sequences and scenes reordered and characters reconsidered. It’s still defiantly, pleasingly weird though, like a waking nightmare unfolding in a sea of neon, chrome, brick and glass where humanity is in short supply but ego, image and cheap thrills are in abundance.

Is it actually better than before? Not necessarily, but it remains a chilling and thrilling night out, one that captures the unique atmosphere of paranoia, icy cynicism and flamboyant consumerism of the 1980s. Duncan Sheik’s synth-heavy, mordantly melodic songs, more minor than major key, are so irresistibly redolent of the period that somebody unfamiliar with late twentieth century pop might have a hard time working out where the score ends and the actual chart hits of the time begin:  Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’, Phil Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’ and New Order’s ‘True Faith’ are all included.

2026’s Patrick Bateman, the designer label-obsessed, emotionally disconnected Wall Street banker who may or may not be a serial killer, is Arty Froushan in a tremendously accomplished musical theatre debut. He imbues Bateman with an edgy charm, and a wide-eyed, almost child-like watchfulness that troubles far more than his urban playboy swagger. Unlike his predecessors in the role (including Benjamin Walker on Broadway and Christian Bale in the 2000 film), Froushan suggests that Bateman never quite feels ‘enough’, that he is somehow at sea in the world of wealth and privilege his financial position has put him in. When, at the beginning, he describes his well-appointed apartment, he feels less smug and more eager to impress. When his chic downstairs neighbour laughs at him for hanging an expensive painting upside down, his reaction is fear of exposure as much as fury. He makes vivid and all too credible the gulf between Bateman’s slightly withdrawn social stance as a privileged but perpetual outsider, and the simmering mania that periodically boils over with a mixture of glee and total abandon. He looks older than the 27 years that the text repeatedly reminds us he is, but this really is a terrific central turn. 

Between Froushan’s performance and the revised staging, which replaces fake stage blood (the original was awash with it) with scarlet fabrics, lighting and video effects, it seems more clear this time around that Bateman’s graphic murder fantasies are just that, not actual events. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s book is a skilful distillation of the original novel, managing to evoke real horror and revulsion while seldom becoming a hard watch, and it’s often bleakly hilarious.

This time around, the chasm between satirising the snobbish shallowness of extreme wealth (“I will not have an odd number at my dinner table, Patrick! This isn’t Brooklyn!”) and the fratty, misogynistic bants of the corporate financial bros, and the little bits of genuine feeling on display, feels more pronounced. That does lead to a certain unevenness but it also, tellingly, throws the humanity of the victims into sharper relief: it’s impossible not to be moved by Joseph Mydell’s homeless man, sobbing pitifully over the bank note Bateman has tossed down in front of him, or not to feel pity for the sex workers (Hannah Yun Chamberlain and Millie Mayhew, both hugely effective) who are reduced to twitching cadavers. Yep, as ‘dark’ musicals go, this one is right up there with Sweeney Todd.

In theatricalising a story as gory as this one, there is inevitably a degree of artifice required that is perhaps best served by the distance lent by a proscenium arch; the original version had that, but this one doesn’t. Es Devlin’s set is a sleek black runway extended into the Almeida stalls and ending in a forbidding-looking tunnel that suggests a railway arch but also the urban-chic downtown nightclubs where Patrick and his cohorts go on their coke-fuelled binges. It’s very striking, especially as excitingly lit by Jon Clark and enhanced by Finn Ross’ sophisticated video floor, but it paints the staging into a bit of a corner, with actors constantly masking each other, and repetitive scene changes (things rise up through the floor ad infinitum). It’s only possible to really take in Lynne Page’s dynamic, unsettling choreography if you’re front centre in the circle, but equally if you’re up there you miss the immediacy of having performers centimetres away from you in the stalls. Still, it’s a glossily attractive eyeful, and Katrina Lindsay’s elegant (even when ripped to shreds) costumes evoke the 1980s without sending them up.

There are some great voices in the cast but this isn’t a score that requires steel-lunged belting, and it’s the acting choices that really impress here. Emily Barber and Tanisha Spring bring a brittle glamour and surreal humour to, respectively, Bateman’s moneyed girlfriend and her best mate (who he’s also sleeping with, of course). Anastasia Martin, wonderful, and looking uncannily like a young Dianne Wiest, is the steady, decent heart of the piece as the secretary in love with Patrick and possibly the only person capable of helping him. Kim Ismay is a deadpan hoot as his soignée, heavily medicated mother and the incredulous Russian dry cleaner charged with removing bloodstains. There’s superb work from Daniel Bravo, smooth as silk as Bateman’s professional nemesis, and Olly Higginson, splendidly obnoxious as the cockiest of his colleagues, also providing a bang-on impersonation of Patrick’s idol, one Donald J Trump. Zheng Xi Yong is cute and appropriately bonkers as a lost soul in thrall to Bateman.

Thunderous, poisonous, and just occasionally a little ponderous, this is a musical that refuses to play by the rules. There are brief moments, usually involving dance beats and Page’s barnstorming yet macabre choreography (the glam rock-adjacent ‘Killing Spree’ which sees our anti-hero, mic in one hand, knife or shotgun in the other, slaughter the entire company, is a prime example), where it capitulates, almost, to traditional musical theatre exhilaration. For the most part though, American Psycho is a piece that invites us to meet it on its own terms, and, perhaps surprisingly, it works. Something this nasty and cynical has no business being so much damn fun.