Review: AMERICAN PSYCHO at Almeida

Slick and good looking, Patrick Bateman (Arty Froushan) is the kind of investment banker you'll either be prone to swooning over or will make your toes curl. If you're sensible it will be the latter and you'll keep your distance, for his polished veneer shrouds a grotesque and sinister persona and some considerable mental issues. His Chanel bedecked mother (Kim Ismay) just wants him to meet a nice girl and takes a shine to his sensible and pretty secretary Jean (Anastasia Martin) who she believes is a step up from his fiancée Evelyn (a terrific turn from Emily Barber) who exudes upbeat positivity looking like a radiant Jackie Kennedy as she deals with caterers and discusses where and with whom the couple will stay when holidaying in the Hamptons.

The first thing to note about the shows episodic book, is just how dated references to the original Wall Street yuppie era feel — the designer name suits, the obsession with getting into and being seen at the swankiest eateries and trendiest nightclubs, ubiquitous cocaine use, and of course the most inane and banal means of measuring status, business cards! In a bizarre way, the 80s and the alienation we feel for the period, distances us as viewers from the reality of the manic cruelty and deranged moments which Bateman enacts as his contempt and bloodlust cause him to despatch prostitutes, homeless people and take an axe to those he views as rivals and competitors in his firmament like Paul Owen (Daniel Bravo) who has been given the lucrative Fischer account and oozes East Coast, Ivy League, old money entitlement.

The few scripted updates perhaps unsurprisingly centre around property mogul Donald Trump. Bateman's ride in the apartment lift gives Oli Higginson a moment to impersonate the vacuous future President (who cannot resist plugging his Art of the Deal tome as a great read), otherwise the actor appears as Timothy Price, delivering some devastating high tenor vocal lines in the process.

Lynne Page's choreography is slickly squared-off, with runway movement and writhing, sexualised group montages. Work-out classes reveal ripped physiques and designer everything, meaning that Manhattan's facile image consciousness of the period, is writ large in every scene.

Aside from Arty Froushan's near constant onstage presence under the lights, the major star of the show is Es Devlin's set design, which boasts an illuminated screening curtain upstage of the video projected thrust stage which has transformed the space into the bricked arched entrance of NYC's Tunnel nightclub in the Meatpackers district of yesteryear. Those of us who were lucky enough to experience the place in our youth will instantly be transported to those heady days of roof top parties watching the sun go down behind the Twin Towers. What a time to be alive… and then the AIDS crisis arrived, cruelly and indiscriminately despatching its victims rather like Bateman in his more frenzied moments.

The ensemble cast delivers strongly throughout and exudes confidence. Those not already mentioned above, include: Jack Butterworth (Craig), Hannah Yun Chamberlain (Christine), Alex James-Hatton (Sean), Liz Kamille, Millie Mayhew (Sabrina), Posi Morakinyo (with a notable acrobatic agility for one so tall in being shot multiple times), Joseph Mydell (as Detective Kimball), Asha Parker-Wallace (throwing some exceedingly sharp ArtsEd stylee moves), Tanisha Spring (Courtney), Zheng Xi Yong (as the sexually confused Luis), Samuel J Weir and Kirsty Ingram.

The show which also draws on reworked classic tunes of the period including: Everybody Wants To Rule The World, In The Air Tonight, Hip To Be Square and Don't You Want Me, runs 165mins including a 20min interval and continues at Almeida until 14th March.