Review: Scorching Social Satire Musical AMERICAN PSYCHO Examines The Demon Banker of Wall Street

Like a one-percenter Sweeney Todd, the Wall Street banker at the center of Duncan Sheik (score) and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's (book) scorching social satire musical based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel, American Psycho, cracks under the pressure of the vapid competitiveness of his world in a bloody fashion that parallels the self-centered survival techniques of his everyday life.

Sharply directed by Rupert Goold, the creators get a great deal of laughs depicting a greed-infested, status-obsessed social circle living off the spoils of the 1980s financial boom as objects of ridicule whose pounding electronic music, pricey recreational drug culture, self-oppressive devotion to maintaining a hardbody physique, sex lives unencumbered by the complications of love and communication skills lifted from ad copy and non-fiction best-sellers contribute to mind-numbing contentment devoid of real human connections.

This is a world where having an outdated font on your business card makes you an object of pity, if there was anyone around who was capable of pity.

We're introduced to this world by the questionably accurate narrator Patrick Bateman, terrifically played by Benjamin Walker with confident aloofness that occasionally shows fear of failure through the rare cracks. While a smiling Ronald Reagan graces his big, enormous 30-inch screen television, he emerges from an upright tanning bed in his clean, white minimalist apartment.

While good musicals usually introduce their main characters with an "I want" song, Patrick delivers us an "I have" monologue.

"Whenever I tan, I wear a chilled, custom-made silicon gel mask to keep my eyes from looking puffy," are his first words as he casually allows viewers to gander at his impeccably buff physique, covered by nothing but Ralph Lauren tighty-whities.

What becomes immediately clear, and very funny, is that Patrick and his colleagues get no greater pleasure from the stuff they possess than the knowledge that they possess it.

That same attitude applies to what can be called his love life. Heléne Yorke is a kick as his status-and-stuff hungry girlfriend. Drew Moerlein also makes a fine impression as the professional rival that stirs Patrick's competitive nature.

Giving the story an occasional grounding is Jennifer Damiano, nicely sincere as Patrick's assistant who sees a worthy man underneath her boss' polished exterior. The talents of Tony-winner Alice Ripley aren't utilized much in her three small roles, the largest of which, Patrick's mother, is the center of the musical's most sentimental, and weakest, scene.

AMERICAN PSYCHO is at its best when it avoids emotion. Patrick's episodes of murderous and sexual violence are well-staged, without sensationalism or glorification. By the time they begin Goold has so effective immerged the audience into his main character's unfeeling world that his actions can be observed more as social commentary than as horrific acts on innocent victims.

Duncan Sheik's electronic techno score mimics the incessant pounding of 80s nightlife house music, while the intense jerkiness of Lynne Page's Tunnel-inspired choreography (the infamous night spot serves as a location) mimics the involuntary death spasms of Patrick's targets. Finn Ross' video projections comically complete the dance club atmosphere in unexpected ways.

Sheik's lyrics spoof the values of the era - fashion and physique as the measures of one's worth - but one misstep is the inclusion of hit songs from the era. Huey Lewis' "Hip To Be Square" is incorporated the same way it is in the novel, but the score also includes selections like Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" and Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." The composer/lyricist and his cohorts are so spot-on with just about everything else in this crisp new musical that it would have been nice to see what Sheik would have come up with himself.

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