American Psycho review – yuppies making a killing offers a chilling origin story for our corrupt times

2026-02-02 - 00:15

Almeida theatre, London In a bloody, brilliant, full circle Rupert Goold bows out as artistic director of the Almeida with a timely revival of the musical he first staged here in 2013 The term “yuppie” conjures visions of shoulder pads, Filofaxes and liquid lunches. This is the world Patrick Bateman inhabits and Bret Easton Ellis’s narcissistic banker is every inch the embodiment of it – a creature of Wall Street’s hedonistic heyday, blinging in designer-wear as he swings his axe at high-end escorts and the homeless. So Rupert Goold’s decision to resurrect this musical adaptation of Ellis’s ghastly 1991 masterpiece is not without risk. Don’t these singing yuppies seem ridiculously passé now in their boxy suits and Ralph Lauren underwear? The satire is amped to 10, licking its lips, it seems, as it sends up the 1980s. But it never spirals into kitsch and our contemporary world of toxic masculinity, Trumpian capitalism and Insta-fuelled solipsism slowly, chillingly, creeps out of it. Continue reading...