by David Schultz

Homicidal maniacs and killers have graced the boards on Broadway before; most notably in Sondheim’s Sweeny Todd in 1979. Other less notable villains have been seen before, though it is a rare occurrence that they star in their own musical. The portrait of this cult figure was initially introduced to us in Bret Easton Ellis’s book published in 1991. This killer-driller-thriller was condemned in many literary circles and was sighted for being extremely misogynistic and extraordinarily gory. Times have changed; the film version has achieved a certain cult status in many circles, and over the decades has become a time capsule of the 80’s. This psychopathic murderer has evolved into an antihero…. who knew?   

Composer Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), along with book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has created a musical with an arch satirical tone that attempts to give our hero a patina of emotional reflection before he carves out his wanton murders. The narcissism of the decade, and materialistic greed of these shallow denizens is unearthed to good effect.

 Morgan Weed, Alex Michael Stoll, Benjamin Walker, Dave Thomas Brown, Jordan Dean and Heléne Yorke.

The evening begins as the monster at hand ascends from the stage lying in a tanning booth, clothed in just his tighty-whities, singing boastfully of his accoutrements at home and his daily cleansing regimen. This “Opening (Morning Routine)”  dialogue is lifted directly from the book, and sets the tone for the evening. Acerbic verbiage is sung directly to the audience as the stage is shot through with visual projections of commercials of the day, shallow empty shills for the consumer dollar, co-mingled with snippets of president Reagan pontificating to the masses. Capitalism and politics blur as the musical starts out on its bloody inevitable trail of horror.   

Benjamin Walker (Patrick Bateman) takes this rather one-dimensional character, a young Wall Street investment banker, and transforms him into a tortured conflicted soul filled with subterranean remorse just below the surface. He is cool and distant with his shallow fiancée Evelyn (Helene Yorke), perfectly captured in a shrill and amusing reading of this role. In addition to his fiancée Bateman has snared Evelyn’s best friend Courtney (Morgan Weed) as his mistress.

Morgan Weed and Helene Yorke

The office that Patrick works for is filled with overly cocky and confident men clawing their way higher up the ladder of success. Standouts are Timothy Price (Theo Stockman) and Paul Owen (Drew Moerlein) who will get his comeuppance at the close of the first act, shown in bloody detail.  Overseeing the office for Patrick is his dutiful secretary Jean (Jennifer Damiano) who attends to his every whim.

The cast is loaded with various businessmen who populate the office, but they, no doubt a director’s conceit, blend into one another and it’s frequently hard to distinguish one man from the other; they seem to be cut from the same overconfident cloth. Patrick’s depressed and medicated mother (Alice Ripley) oversees her son in a confused mindset. She only chooses to recall her son as a young boy, and turns her head away from a creeping sensation that something is amiss. Ms. Ripley is largely wasted in a very small role, but she is nonetheless gripping in her few moments onstage. The violence begins early on with Patrick thinking ‘its just a phase’ that he is going through. But incrementally, with each additional death piling up, he finds his true calling, as each monstrous act seems to salve his uncontrollable desires for a while, until the next time he finds a new victim to slaughter. 

The extreme violence within the musical is kept at arm’s reach. The show is buoyed along with its wink-wink asides to the audience, mingled with its pitch-black comic moments. An undeniable sense of alienation has created this monster.  Finding the right savage mood is the tricky thing, and as hard as it tries, this musical is frequently at odds with its seesawing tone. Switching gears and shaking up an audience is surely a good thing, but in retrospect, the musical still is missing that ephemeral ingredient to make the thing pop and truly make an impact and cohere.

There is still much to recommend, first and foremost the physical design of the piece. Scenic designer ES Devlin has concocted a claustrophobic box-like minimalistic interior, all the better to allow Video designer Finn Ross to run riot with a plethora of phantasmagoric projections onto the space. This visual space is shockingly alive as it gives a propulsive life to the musical. Mr. Sheik’s electronic-pop score has a distinct 80’s sound as it amusingly replicates the dance music of the era. The lyrics are arch and in keeping with the tone of the original book and film. This score works well within the confines of the interior mind of these characters. 

As the play nears its conclusion, as the body count reaches an exceedingly high amount; a passing comment from a detective puts a spin on what we have just been sitting through for the last two hours. Some theatergoers will see it as a cop-out, others will possibly see it as a brilliant commentary on the lead character’s disturbed mind. The open-ended question sits there in your cranium. Does it make all the joyful butchering violence any more palatable? Your guess is as good as mine. Love it or hate it, this Psycho is one of the more unusual offerings running on Broadway right now.

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45^th Street
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212-239-6200
AmericanPsychoTheMusical.com