FringeReview UK 2026
American Psycho
Almeida Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, American Theater, Drama, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Almeida Theatre, Islington
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
The Almeida’s artistic director Rupert Goold started with and ends his tenure with the acclaimed adaptation he premiered in 2013: of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s (book) and Duncan Sheik’s (music and lyrics) musical of American Psycho, directed by Goold till March 14 has sold out.
If you can queue, you’ll be in good company. Jean queued for Les Mis at 6.30 am.
Review
“This is what being Patrick Bateman means to me.” And it’s even more relevant than 2013 let alone 1991. The Almeida’s artistic director Rupert Goold started with and ends his tenure with the acclaimed adaptation he premiered in 2013: of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s (book) and Duncan Sheik’s (music and lyrics) musical of American Psycho, directed by Goold till March 14 has sold out. There’s returns; it’s one of the most anticipated revivals of recent years.
That statement by the protagonist, a Wall street investor, ends a circular question of identity and “entity”: all Bateman thinks he is. That is via what toxic masculinity, misogyny, extreme violence have been injected like a serum or applied in a facial. There were other candidates for revival: Chimerica for instance also from 2013, a highpoint also startlingly relevant. Socially though, this one, re-invested with all the book’s Trump references (and more, wait for the elevator) excised from the film, lands squarely now. Blink and an Epstein has been added.
Though set in 1989 and taken then as satire, now Bateman’s lifestyle, routines and attitudes are lionized as incel role-modelling. Irony hasn’t so much died as been body-snatched. Which begs different questions of the plot.
There’s differences to the premiere: moving a laundry moment to a more chronologically apt point of the drama; and the denouement of the famous Fisher account’s shifted too. After two hours forty, the ambiguous ending, whether one realistic reading raises more fantastical questions than answers (including whether a policeman hallucinates or a real estate agency would go to such cleaning levels) is as open-ended as ever.
What strikes you first is Lynne Page’s choreography. It’s either a thing of platonic shoulder-pads, all strut and hustle; even suavely robotic, pumped with late eighties testosterone. Or a frenetic ritual slashed with red lighting and cascading bodies.
Arty Froushan, fresh from The Line of Beauty, is onstage almost constantly as Bateman, the 26-year-old who crashes out of his own birthday party hosted by his fiancé to get high, wasted and perhaps waste others. Together since Harvard, Bateman can’t really stand Evelyn Williams (an effortlessly brittle Emily Barber) diamond-cut in beauty as entitlement. Both whirl every fashionable reference, especially Bateman, whose cleaning routines, removed from satire, are now paid homage. Froushan’s is a phenomenal performance, full of preppy but slinky energy, hollowed by self-loathing and shadowed by disgust with others. He sings too or simply speaks the lyric: he’s ideally clear. Earlier, you root for his ambition, shallow as it is: to bag the Fisher account, which initially falls to his “nemesis” Paul Owen (suave, purring Daniel Bravo). Not only Harvard but LSE: that step ahead. Later you’re desperate for Bateman to misstep.
Bateman exudes disgust with all except his PA, Jean, (Anastasia Martin creating a still centre). Here Martin exudes Jean’s redemptive love and innocence you dread will not go unpunished. Especially when icy Mrs Bateman (Kim Ismay) approves of Jean, the way she doesn’t like Evelyn. Too much like her, perhaps. Realised by this team and Ismay, there’s some explanation of the way Bateman turns out, despite radiant memories of his childhood, that recall Trump senior’s effects on his children.
Es Devlin’s graphite-dark set lit by Jon Clark with that characteristically icy penumbra he often brings, is cleared for action and backlit with some serious attention to the Almeida’s brick arch-turned-halo with a diaphanous curtain; and Finn Ross’s video design. Only a trap-door or under-elevator as it were brings up different props: office, sun-lounger, weapons of mass distraction, bodies. Kan Moses Schrier’s sound sculpts David Shrubsole’s musical arrangements, directed by Ellen Campbell with Oli Briant on keyboard and guitars.
There’s bro without the bromance, and more women Bateman despises. Oli Higginson’s Tim Price is his bestie, sort of. There’s a new twist, a man not threatening but more consistent in Higginson’s affable persona – he also plays Trump so you see a shadow side. Callow Craig McDermott (Jack Butterworth) earns their scorn; while Posi Morakinyo’s David Van Patten embodies a bland entitlement that’s now fading. Then the paradox of uber-smart Courtney Lawrence (Tanisha Spring) whom Bateman conducts an affair with despite her friendship with Evelyn: till he tries going Julian Assange. Courtney’s with Luis Carruthers (Zheng Xi Yong) who sort of wants to return the favour, unwittingly. That can’t end well.
Joseph Mydall’s detective Kimball appears late, reinforcing the Talented Mr Ripley subtext that pulses through American Psycho. It’s clearer here. Mydall’s both interrogatory yet twinklingly affable. You can see in this performance why Bateman might want to confess to him.
There’s scintillating performances throughout. Sean Bateman (Alex James-Hatton) Patrick’s irritating brat brother baseball-caps the party with gaucheness. You wonder how he escaped his brother’s icy genes. Escorts Christine (Hannah Yun Chamberlain) and Sabrina Millie Mayhew) form a warily contortive double-act; and neighbour Victoria (Asha Parker-Wallace) with sharper eyes for laundry and upside-down paintings than is good for her. The cast’s completed by Kirsty Ingram, Liz Kamille, Samuel J Weir.
The music from the start is still pretty memorable. The first number “Selling Out” is the most nagging with insistent rhymes of “uh-oh” and others. A jagged late 80s feel kicks it with adrenaline and to a degree all the music. Other adaptations particularly “Something in the Air” with its chilling presentiments each time, are absorbed into the style. High-octane performances gives off fumes of pure greed.
Brilliantly engaging and repellent by turns, the chemical chimera that is Patrick Bateman, son of Bates Motel perhaps teases with prophesy and ends a horrible fact. Especially given Mrs Bateman, or is this more a squint of misogyny? There’s a mortuary glow about this production that draws you in with its gestural though mild schlock. Whether all this happens or not, it’s happened now. And it’s a gleaming chrome swansong for Goold. If you can queue, you’ll be in good company. Jean queued for Les Mis at 6.30 am.
Costume Designer Katrina Lindsay, Movement and Intimacy Director Lucy Hind, Casting Director Natalie Gallacher for Pippa Ailion and Natalie Gallacher Casing CDG, Costume Supervisor Eleanor Dolan, Wigs, Hair and Makeup Supervisor Daren Ware, Props Supervisor Laura Flowers
Associate Director Bethany West, Associate Choreographer Jasmin Colangelo, Design Associates Victoria Bosch Vélez, Zoe Diakaki, Associate Costume Designer Jonathan Lipman, Associate Sound Designer Joshua D Reid, Associate Costume Supervisor Natalie Jackson
Dialect Coach Brett Tyne, Voice Coach Mary Hammond, Fight Director Sam Lyon-Behan, Magic Consultant John Bulleid, Vocal Arrangements (In the Air Tonight) Jason Hart.
