What Being Patrick Bateman Means to Me - The Death of American Psycho on Broadway

I was very fortunate to have attended one of the last Broadway performances of Duncan Sheik’s musical American Psycho, an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s seminal and controversial 1991 novel and the cult classic film version starring a young Christian Bale and Chloe Sevigny.

The musical shouldn’t have worked. In fact, some critics have said that it had no business being produced anywhere near the Great White Way. On paper – and in theory – perhaps these critics were right. While conceding that a Broadway musical about a paranoid Wall Street investment banker moonlighting as an ax-wielding serial killer at the end of the 1980s doesn’t immediately strike one as the ideal subject matter for a song-and-dance extravaganza, I have to say that American Psycho was indeed one of the sexiest, most inventive, and chillingly modern pieces musical theater I have seen in I don’t know how long.

While accolades (and eleven Tony awards) have – deservedly – been bestowed upon Hamilton, and the diversity among both the nominees and Tony winners at Sunday’s awards show should be celebrated as the milestones that they are (especially in the wake of #OscarSoWhite), I make the argument that while Hamilton is a celebration of diversity and an ingenious multicultural take on an important part of United States history, American Psycho forced its audiences to realize that despite its caustically satiric tone (and copious amounts of stage blood), and the distance of 30 years, the likes of Patrick Bateman, Paul Owen, Evelyn, Courtney, Lewis, Jean, and the other faceless/soulless denizens of the world in which these characters inhabit are not all that different or removed from who and what many of us still are today.

Many of us go to the theater – and perhaps specifically Musical Theater – to escape from the cold, harsh, violent and tragic world we find ourselves in in these opening decades of the 21^st century. We fall in love with the innocence and idealism of She Loves Me. We take comfort in the nostalgia of tradition in Fiddler on the Roof. We find inspiration in the triumph of Celie in The Color Purple. We thrill to the urban hip-hop and infectious energy and genius wordplay of Hamilton. Each of these shows provides two to three hours of welcome escapism, entertainment, emotion, and generous amounts of heart. As the curtain falls and the cast comes out onto the stage for their final bows, we jump to our feet on a wave of good feeling. We feel better about the world. We have been uplifted. We have been moved to tears – of joy and compassion and understanding – and perhaps most importantly we have been entertained.

American Psycho, on the other hand, offered no such grace. Yes, the audience was on its feet as the indomitable Benjamin Walker held his Walkman up for the last time and intoned “And this is what being Patrick Bateman means to me.” Sure, we thrilled to the ingenious staging, courtesy of the insanely talented Rupert Goold – the lighting and projections were as drop dead gorgeous as the runway model-perfect cast. We bopped our heads and moved our feet to the deadpan and dead-on 1980s Tunnel-perfect choreography by Lynne Page. We laughed (perhaps somewhat guiltily) at the shockingly crude and crudely shocking book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa that was never without tongue firmly planted in cheek. We delighted in the perfect 1980s-inspired score by Tony and Grammy Award-winning musician Duncan Sheik whose integration of original songs with some era-specific standards (In the Air Tonight still gives me chills) gave Broadway one of its most memorable (and slightly nostalgic) scores in years. And of course the performances by the entire cast – including the aforesaid Benjamin Walker, and Helene Yorke, Jennifer Damiano, Drew Moerlein, Jordan Dean, Alice Ripley, Morgan Weed – several of whom were making their Broadway debuts, amounted to one of the strongest ensembles this side of Hamilton.

And yet…despite all of these superlatives, American Psycho was more than just an escapist night out at the theater. Its power derived from the fact that it held a mirror to our lives and to our society today. We don’t like what it reflects but we can’t escape it. No, 2016 is not 1989, but: Donald Trump could be our next president. A lone gunman armed with assault weapons burst into a nightclub and massacred 49 innocent club goers in cold blood and injured more than fifty others (the unspeakable horror of which was somewhat eerily prescient in the Killing Spree and I Am Back sequences in American Psycho’s second act.) The corporate greed, the disparity between the rich and poor, our society’s continued obsession with status (Cards) and label consciousness, (You Are What You Wear), all of this was reflected back at us again and again in American Psycho.

And at the end of the show, what are we left with? Not a feel-good anthem that propels you out into Times Square humming the show’s eleven o’clock number. Far from it. American Psycho leaves you with one of the most downbeat closing numbers perhaps every written for musical theater: This is Not an Exit, a poetic and Emo-inspired ballad sung by Patrick Bateman that tells us “this is not a cautionary tale/No memento mori/Or a vague perhaps … I am all alone here/I am a solipsist./ I am not a person known to anyone. /All the doors are tried and tested. /I know this is not an exit now. /Should we be afraid?” This is existentialism, folks. It challenges us to leave the theater questioning our lives, our position in society, pondering life’s Big Questions.  What’s it all about, Alfie?

I think in retrospect, American Psycho will be recognized as a seminal piece of musical theater. It will always have its haters, but I think if we can get past a perhaps natural aversion to seeing a buff, designer-attired chainsaw-wielding anti-hero dancing to New Order-inspired pop while cutting a bloody swath through his fellow cast members, we will recognize the brilliance of Duncan Sheik and Rupert Goold’s vision (not to mention Bret Easton Ellis’s) as a sharp, funny, and bold vision of where we are in the middle of the second decade of the 21^st century. American Psycho wasn’t about getting us to feel uplifted or spiritually enlightened. It was about forcing us to look within ourselves and our society and recognize that, sadly, not a whole lot has changed in thirty years.

And that is what being Patrick Bateman means to me.