Review: American Psycho
@ the Almeida until March 14th 2026
Director: Rupert Goold
Writer: Bret Easton Ellis
Adapted by: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Duncan Sheik
Cast: Arty Froushan, Daniel Bravo, Liz Kamille, Jack Butterworth & Oli Higginson
The somewhat trite, but nonetheless accurate, cliché about George Orwell’s 1984 is that he wrote it as a warning to future generations rather than an instruction manual for them to follow. The same could just as easily be said of Bret Easton Ellis’ most (in)famous and influential novel. While nominally written as a satire of the grotesque, hypercommodified America birthed by Reagan and his acolytes, American Psycho has become a bible for a certain strain of contemporary sociopath for whom Patrick Bateman has attained an almost prophet-like status. It’s all but impossible to gaze upon the current tranche of freaks, mobsters and nonces that constitute America’s neo-aristocracy and not see Ellis’ titular psycho oozing from every one of their vile, oleaginous pores.
Of course, American Psycho wasn’t solely intended to satirise a particular person or type of person. Bateman serves as a cipher for Ellis’ assault on consumerism itself and, more broadly, on the style of vicious, unregulated capitalism so revered by a class of elites determined to convert everyone into a commodity. In the current Digital Age, where every aspect of our character and every facet of our data is up for sale, often without our express consent, Ellis’ novel has taken on additional prescience, even as the author himself has slowly morphed into a lazy parody of the very men he used to decry. The Trump ascendency, the dominance of the billionaire Tech Bro, the reversal of basic human rights and the march towards crude authoritarianism and dollar store fascism across much of the quote-unquote “free” world - as America leads, the supine West follows - resemble a reflection of the world envisaged in American Psycho because they’re all symptoms and consequences of policies set in motion decades earlier. It’s no wonder, then, that the novel retains some salience.
It therefore feels apt that Rupert Goold’s final production as artistic director at the Almeida is a revival of his first in that role. When American Psycho premiered in 2013, Goold couldn’t possibly have foreseen just how much the world would come to resemble one of Bateman’s wet dreams, and thirteen years since it was first staged things remain, at best, static. The sociopathy of Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, who were riding roughshod over the nation all those years ago, has evolved (or rather regressed) into the outright monstrousness of Trump and the dull malignance of Starmer et. al. After thirteen successful years at the helm of one of the most popular theatres in one of the most progressive boroughs in the nation’s capital, nothing has changed: the liberal left has failed and the psychopaths still reign supreme. We’re right back to where we began, and so it is fitting that Goold’s stewardship of the Almeida has come full circle.
Fittingly, with all of its unsubtle nudges and winks to a liberal London audience increasingly exhausted by the march of the populist right, this take on American Psycho slips just as neatly into the cosy metropolitan cultural domain of 2026 as it did into that of 2013. Clocking in at almost 170 minutes, this show is a full hour longer than Mary Harron’s turn-of-the-millennium film adaptation of the same material, yet it adds little to the conversation Ellis was having with his readers almost forty years ago. The soundtrack’s original songs reflect the facile perspectives of the story’s protagonist, which makes for some humorous, self-aware lyricism, but none of them are particularly memorable and their satirical bite is rather... gummy. Multiple references are made to Trump, Epstein and the crisis of late-capitalism, all of which the audience are invited to chuckle and guffaw at, but the songs are less a daring provocation than a gentle prod: that Trump eh? What a plonker! Capitalism? Boo, hiss! Man, aren’t all of these yuppies just awful?
And awful they are, and it is undoubtedly fun to watch all of these contemptible characters navigate their Bacchanalian world of decay and depravity as though their lives and their petty obsessions with wealth and status matter. The ensemble embodies these loathsome individuals with considerable skill, and though the vocals are never more than fine, the performances are playful and spirited, which encourages us to immerse ourselves in their crassness and frivolity. At the heart of the show is Arty Froushan who, as Bateman, drips with a deliciously sleazy charisma, adroitly portraying him as the almost intangible mirage he is. Bateman is, by his own admission, a fraudulent reflection of his own scatty aspirations - he is obsessed with pop culture and has a surface-level awareness of current affairs and the arts - and Froushan’s performance is finely controlled, even in those moments of hyperviolent carnage and bloodlust, which helps him to capture the character’s curiously complex simplicity.
Furthermore, as a sort of visual and aural pageantry, American Psycho, with its synth score and re-imaginings of classic 80s hits, convincingly conveys that hedonistic, febrile atmosphere of the decade of excess. The lighting, when it isn’t blinding you from the back wall, is used to great effect to exude a milieu of chaos and opulence, and the floor lighting in particular heightens the violent spectacle of the piece. The booming, piercing sound design envelops the small theatre, so that we feel trapped in Bateman’s increasingly fractured mind, and though the lyrics are hollow - arguably, though unconvincingly, by design - the choreography of the musical numbers is a frenzied delight.
A friend I saw this with came to the conclusion that he “didn’t like it, with caveats”. In a similar but slightly more positive vein, I “like it, with reservations”. In 2026, satire needs to be much punchier and nastier than this, and American Psycho spends far too long saying much too little. The songs are, for the most part, functional but unmemorable, and the vocals are consistent but rarely strong enough to sell the overall product. Nonetheless, it’s an ambitious and often amusing show and one that, though its bite is toothless, is quite enjoyably hollow.
Also, pretty much the entire cast is fitttt so, y’know, that always helps.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐