Cool, Cool Men

American Psycho at the Schoenfeld Theatre

A scene from American Psycho.

         Remember when serial killing used to be fun?  I’m talking about the good old days, when Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs, tearing off the face of a duped security guard, betrayed the slightest hint of a grin at the corner of his lips; or when Anton Chigurh, in No Country for Old Men, still managed to take a grim satisfaction in his increasingly creative butchery.  For sure, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, that deliciously soulless Wall Street banker with a heart of the finest mahogany, used to remember those days.  In fact, one could argue that with his fascination with the greats of his time – the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, Leatherface, and, on an unrelated note, Donald Trump – he was even our foremost elegist of levity in assassination.  

You wouldn’t know it to look at him now, as played by Benjamin Walker in the musical version of that disturbingly relevant novel and film, at the Schoenfeld.  In a later scene, when one of his killing sprees is staged, by the unstoppably innovative director Rupert Goold (King Charles III) and genius choreographer Lynne Page, as a synchronized ‘80s club dance, Bateman is relentlessly grim, his jaw set firmly as he literally stabs friends and call girls in the back with serrated knives.  He doesn’t even crack a semblance of a smile until he starts shooting bystanders between his legs with a pump-action shotgun.  Go figure.

Christian Bale, in the 2000 film, made Bateman one of the more fascinating characters of turn-of-the-century cinema by shading the possible murderer, definite sociopath with the dead-eyed remove he later put to use, to brilliant effect, as Bruce Wayne.  But the most well-known image from that film is Bale’s face, splattered with blood, staring down the camera with an open-mouthed, wild smile – he saw the humor in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, meant to be a satire of yuppie consumerism and doomed to be eternally misinterpreted. 

This musical, by contrast, is written by Duncan Sheik, which means it can’t be interpreted at all – like most of his work, it’s performance art with the volume turned up, always interesting but never masterful.  (It doesn’t help that Mr. Sheik, writing some of his first theater lyrics here, is a borderline terrible lyricist, if admittedly a pitch-perfect writer of ‘80s genre parody.)  His score, which is at best fine, at worst affirmatively dull, and the book, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, alternately hew to the satire Mr. Ellis intended and fall into the easy trap of turning Bateman into a tortured philosopher instead of what he is, which is a fun monster.  Several bizarre scenes, seemingly visiting from other musicals, ensue – among them an “A Chorus Line”-style power anthem version of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” and, genuinely confusingly, what amounts to a one-scene cameo for Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley as Bateman’s mother, a part invented for the show, who sings (with Jennifer Damiano’s mousy assistant) a wistful ballad about the genuine goodness inside her son, called “Nice Thought.”  Nice thought indeed.

There’s only so much vapidity a narrative can stand before it becomes all about surfaces, but, luckily, the surfaces here may be unlike anything seen on a Broadway stage before.  Es Devlin, concert scenic designer for superstars ranging from Jay-Z to U2, creates a seemingly infinite hall of mirrors and pristine white walls for Bateman to get lost in, Justin Townsend’s lighting and projections conjure, alternately, the avarice of the decade and Bateman’s rending psyche, and Ms. Page’s choreography (a break-dancing ATM is a highlight) reminds us that those rigid, unchanging club dances of the 1980s were, at their core, a frightening paean to conformity.  Think about that next time you’re doing “Thriller.”

And Mr. Goold pulls it all together, making for a visual experience that rivals the film itself.  It’s fitting, actually, that the best scene in the show, the last of act one, is also the best scene in the movie (to which it’s not disloyal so much as laterally disjointed).  It won’t be a spoiler to anyone remotely familiar with the material to say that it involves an axe murder set to Huey Lewis and the News’ “Hip to Be Square.”  The scene is absolutely flawlessly staged, but what I noticed, more than the artful jets of blood, was that Mr. Walker, as Bateman, dances, at least in this scene, and smiles, at least in this scene, and commits murder, at least in this scene, like someone would if he were having a hell of a time.  I don’t know, maybe it was the Adult Contemporary pop rock at work, but it was the only time during the show when I didn’t have the ironic urge to whisper to one of the most renowned hedonists in pop culture: Jesus, Pat!  Cut loose!  Live a little!