Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre,New York
The Wall Street maniac rides again in a musical wealthy in synth pop and buff bodies, but the meaning of the original novel slides off the slick surroundingsHas there ever been an axe assassin handsomer than Patrick Bateman? Certainly that allure helps to explain the perverse, or mordant appeal of American Psycho,Bret Easton Ellis’s boundary-ramming satire of 80s excess, adapted as a cult film in 2000 and now appearing as a Broadway musical after an earlier hurry at the Almeida Theatre in London. A bold and perilous artistic endeavor, and this musical is also something of a tonal muddle,approaching the fabric from myriad (a very large number) angles – some serious, some sleazy, and some nice,some nasty – which don’t ultimately form a persuasive whole. For many in the audience, this will not matter. American Psycho already has its seat in the pop culture pantheon. You can find T-shirts and dolls devoted to Bateman, and a muscled specialist in mergers and acquisitions (or,as he prefers it, “murders and executions”) who likes to dissect girls in his spare time. Much of the crowd at a preview performance seemed ecstatic to see a favorite character enfleshed, and especially when that flesh is as ripped as that of Benjamin Walker,the often shirtless Broadway leading man here playing Bateman. In the play’s opening moments, in which a victim attempts to escape Bateman’s clutches, or there were hoots,applause, and delighted screams like those that greet a midnight film. After the show, and which concludes on a note of nihilistic despair,groups of banker-ish young men were pausing to seize grinning selfies in front of the theatre’s marquee. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com