American Psycho reviews: Is Rupert Goold’s 2026 London revival a killer?

"Yuppies making a killing offers a chilling origin story for our corrupt times"

"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"

"... 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."

"Who could have imagined that a musical version of this story would work so well in the first place?"

"Arty Froushan, as Bateman, is nowhere near as sinister as Christian Bale’s chainsaw-wielding film portrayal but his preppy boy-next-door turns gradually lunatic, shirt slicked with sweat by the end. It is an impressive performance"

"Duncan Sheik’s score contains one great electro-synth number after another, with a razor sharp book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa."

"The seeds of corruption in our world are all to be found here: Trump is Bateman’s hero and makes a brief appearance. Epstein is name-checked. The unspoken analogy between bankers and psychopaths bears resonance."

"Cold, hard, sharp musical perfect for era of looksmaxxing misogynists"

"Patrick Bateman arrives at the Almeida Theatre for this coolly disturbing musical satire on big money bros"

"If I say that Rupert Goold’s revival of his hit electropop murder musical is full of surface gloss and chilly razzmatazz, I mean it as a compliment."

"This shiny, energetic, body-conscious production lands when greed is once again good and looksmaxxing misogynists are literally all the rage in the manosphere."

"A sweatily mesmerising Arty Froushan vaults confidently from reliable supporting player into the lead role"

"There’s an itchy, anxious, queasy atmosphere from the start here"

"Es Devlin’s superb set... Katrina Lindsay’s ravishing costumes"

"... I mention the design first here because the music and lyrics (by Duncan Sheik – the book is by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) really aren’t that central."

"Froushan’s performance is charismatic and physical, and he lets us see the cracks in Bateman’s handsome façade early on"

"But my god, the bodies! Not the corpses that Bateman supposedly accrues on his scorecard, but the hench torsos and sculpted six packs the younger male actors reveal."

"The grimmest musical to darken London’s stages in years returns with aplomb"

"Rupert Goold’s slick and shiny take on Bret Easton Ellis’s disturbing satire returns to the stage after more than a decade"

"Studded with retro numbers by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), this take on Brett Easton Ellis’s novel first bewildered and thrilled audiences at the Almeida Theatre 12 years ago. Now, artistic director Rupert Goold is bringing it back from the dead to finish his reign with undeniable style."

"Ellis’s novel is a tough read... Goold's production smoothes away its rough edges and replaces them with a high surface sheen."

"The only thing that isn’t slick and shiny about this production is its protagonist. Arty Froushan gives a gawky, surprisingly likeable take on the novel’s Wall Street banker-cum-killer"

"Goold’s production skates the edge of 1980s kitsch, and sometimes Sheik’s songs tip into it. It feels like he had a Filofax of key themes to cover (fashion; business cards; the Hamptons), each of which gets its own glib little number."

"... Goold’s version leans even further into the idea of Bateman being a lost fantasist. Lynne Page’s stellar choreography turns his murder scenes into journeys through fantastical psychological landscapes, shaped by mounds of writhing bodies."

"Still, if this show’s message is uncertain, its impact is undeniable."

"The Almeida musical is slick, disturbing and as resonant as ever"

"Arty Froushan makes a superb Patrick Bateman in this revival of the 2013 Bret Easton Ellis adaptation"

"We’re invited to laugh at this excruciatingly self-obsessed young man, with his “impressive physique” and even more impressively huge ego. But the irony running through the whole of Rupert Goold’s staging... is that this spectacle of toxic masculinity and rampant materialism, mercilessly ridiculing the excesses of the Eighties, lands very differently today. The laughs freeze on your face."

"The mix of fragile vanity, male entitlement and vicious misogyny that underpins this tale of vaunting ego and casual murder, has been amplified by the likes of Andrew Tate. Each iteration of the story brings a new slant to its black comedy and sickly psychological terrain."

"It’s a disturbing watch then, and sinuously executed here. Froushan is superb as Bateman"

"The whole thing is punched forward by Sheik’s ’80s-inflected electronic score and Lynne Page’s sharply honed dance routines"

"It was the musical with which Goold announced his arrival as artistic director of the Almeida; this supersmart, hyper-resonant revival feels like a fitting way to mark his departure."

"Greed is never good - but in American Psycho, it might just be this time"

"It has all the hallmarks of Director Rupert Goold’s flamboyant style, which chimes perfectly with the 1980s-era excess"

"Duncan Sheik (music and lyrics) and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (book) find that their work has amplified grim resonance now, given that a certain businessman is leader of the free world and Bateman is hero-worshipped in sections of the toxic online manosphere."

"Rising star Froushan has just the right air of blank-eyed drive and reptilian suavity"

"This will likely be the only show ever to provide an encomium in song to the business card; Sheik also offers stylish remixes of notable hits from the decade, starting with a hauntingly apposite take on Tears for Fears’s Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

"It feels apt to end with the very show he started with, macabre cautionary tale bookends that speak directly to the present moment."

"The world has changed a lot since 2013 – occasionally making this rejigged, rewritten Psycho feel oddly nostalgic and other times eerily prescient."

"The meteoric rise of shows like Succession and Industry have now made attempts to skewer those mega-rich cliques feel like well-trodden terrain – so much so that many of the satirical elements of the near-three-hour show... don’t feel as groundbreaking as they would have done."

"A musical still needs good tunes to work, and Duncan Sheik’s offerings are, for the most part, bang on the money"

"Goold directs with a typically kinetic style on Es Devlin’s magnificent catwalk-style stage"

"Satisfyingly, Froushan’s tenor Bateman is worlds away from Bale’s interpretation in the film – it’s also a slightly different spin to the baritone drawl that Matt Smith brought to the part when it first ran at the Almeida."

"It’s not a perfect show, and its true impact is perhaps left that bit too late in the final scenes. That said, it’s still a hypnotic, bloody good time"

"A neurotic Patrick Bateman for the incel era as Duncan Sheik’s delicious electro-pop musical returns"

"The score is unabashedly ‘80s, mixing retro electro pop original songs with a smattering of classic covers (New Order, Tears for Fears, etc). But even so, before long it starts to feel alarmingly current. "

"... this Bateman is kind of sympathetic. A bit. Less vile than the book version... Really, he’s a young man trying desperately to fit into a ghastly world of meaningless jobs, meaningless status symbols (the infamous business cards scene is present and correct) and meaningless relationships."

"Froushan’s sweaty, frantic performance is a study in pure anxiety: he wants out of his whole ghastly life but doesn’t quite realise it, unable to see the things that actually make him happy"

"It struck me that there’s a sort of incel analogue here: a young, lost man, alienated from society, driven to extremes of misanthropic thought, his toxic fantasies not too dissimilar from what you’ll find in corners of Twitter."

"Does this all make for a good musical? I mean, it makes for a good cult musical. But for all the demonic razzle dazzle that Goold and his top-notch creative team bring to bear... American Psycho is a deadpan show with a downbeat story that sometimes feels in conflict with the maximalist nature of musical theatre. "

"Was this soulless show really worth reviving?"

"Rupert Goold ends his tenure at the Almeida with a return for his empty musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis classic, starring Arty Froushan"

"It’s slick, it’s shiny and it’s empty."

"The buffed and chiselled Arty Froushan... now takes the lead role. There are solid performances all round, but is the show itself really worth reviving?"

"Technically speaking, it’s more polished than Goold’s tacky production of the tele-evangelist musical Tammy Faye... But as a satire on money-obsessed New Yorkers, American Psycho is every bit as clunky."

"As for the music, Sheik, who gave us the overrated Wedekind reboot Spring Awakening, has assembled an efficient if colourless selection of technopop anthems. The presence of actual hits from the 1980s, including Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World and Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight, puts the new numbers in a less than flattering light."

"... watching this show is an oddly bloodless exercise in nostalgia, like being forced to sit through a re-run of 9½ Weeks."

"This slick American Psycho is a triumph of style over substance"

"Rupert Goold ends his reign at the Almeida by restaging the high-gloss yet hollow Bret Easton Ellis adaptation with which he began it"

"... the awkward question raised by that first staging remains unanswered: namely, for all the show’s style, does it have enough substance?"

"As a fun pastiche of pumped-up yuppie pomp, the musical certainly plays to Goold’s strengths as a director."

"Attempting to navigate this heavily codified catwalk of entitlement and excess, Froushan’s Bateman comes across as a little boy lost."

"Perhaps mercifully, Goold keeps the gore at arm’s length – this is kitsch horror rather than torture porn."

"Yet, it all feels a bit too enjoyable. In the years since the musical was first staged, “toxic masculinity” has become a well-worn trope, yet any putative link between Bateman’s psychopathy and today’s incel culture is only superficially addressed."

"Perhaps the greatest stumbling block is the fact that the original novel is a masterpiece in narrative ambiguity. Since this adaptation signals from the beginning that Bateman is a fantasist, any sense of ghastly jeopardy is lost."

"Enjoyable satirical romp"

"Rupert Goold’s swansong is a wildly entertaining musical take on the notorious novel, but lacks killer instinct"

"He’s a horror born of the 1980s, but you might say that Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’ spectacularly nasty, vain, neurotic fictional creation, has truly come of age."

"That Bateman is a Donald Trump fanboy who treats The Art of the Deal like a religious tract is an irony as disturbing as it is delicious."

"So extreme is the novel’s prose that it’s frankly something of a relief that this musical, first seen at the Almeida in 2013, doesn’t attempt to put its most perverse episodes onstage. Still, this staging... doesn’t have quite sharp enough teeth."

"... It’s slick and enormously entertaining. But it doesn’t deal that killer blow, that sickening, visceral stab of utter, unhinged revulsion that gives Ellis’ story its lethal edge."

"As Bateman, Arty Froushan is an apt mix of arrogant swagger, terrified insecurity and sweaty panic that tips over into simmering rage whenever he’s thwarted"

"His posse of yuppie finance bros – especially Oli Higginson as his loathsome best pal – are hilariously ghastly; one of the best songs sees them singing a bump’n’grind slow jam to a sexily designed business card."

"Yet there’s something deeply conventional in the material’s approach to its cult-hit literary source that undercuts its potency."

"This bloody tale of a serial killer feels even more timely 35 years on"

"Patrick remains an offensively deluded fashion victim, zealously invested in the sins of the modern world. But in today’s metastasised culture of ‘toxic masculinity’, his kind have grown even more familiar. Cue a cameo in an elevator for Donald Trump, who published The Art Of The Deal four years prior to Bateman’s literary birth."

"What makes this more than just a run of the mill misogyny satire is the surprising pathos of Froushan’s Bateman"

"Amid an expensive-looking display of catwalk couture, in Lynne Page’s body-popping choreography, our ripped psychopath has a creased suit – intentional or not, it makes his plight that bit more pathetic."

"Fittingly, Duncan Sheik’s electro-pop music is the aural equivalent of ketchup spattered over the action."

"So invested is the production in Easton Ellis’s nightmare of apex predation, it’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s for or against Patrick. Either way, the show is sold out and will need a West End transfer to allow more people to judge for themselves."