American Psycho, now a musical, still savages consumerism 22 years later
American Psycho, nowa musical, still savages consumerism 23 years on, writes Deborah Orr
Fans of long-running British science-fiction TV series Doctor Who may only just have said their farewells to the last doctor, Matt Smith, but the actor has already moved on. Since the start of December, he's been starring in a musical version of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho at London's Almeida Theatre. The novel was first published in 1991, when Smith was eight years old. But with every passing year, American Psycho looks more prescient.
In choosing to play antihero Patrick Bateman on stage, Smith sends out a shrewd message that he is an actor to be reckoned with, one who knows a sleek and exciting vehicle when he sees one. Which is funny, really. American Psycho is all about making the perfect choice, and the importance of ensuring you're in the position to make it.
The 1990s were predicted to be more caring ... Bret Easton Ellis clearly didn't entertain such soothing fantasies
American Psycho has become what it satirised - a must-have book on a must-have shelf. Because there is no choice really. If you're not a success, you're a failure. That's the contemporary mantra. And who chooses the latter?
The musical's programme includes an interview Easton Ellis gave in 2011, when American Psycho was 20 years old. Asked if Bateman is "an early sign of the zeitgeist", Easton Ellis replies: "Whenever I am asked to talk about American Psycho, I have to remember why I was writing it at the time and what it meant to me. A lot of it had to do with my frustration with having to become an adult and what it meant to be an adult male in American society. I didn't want to be one, because it was all about status."
Which is funny, too. Easton Ellis' roar of anger against a world that demanded success ensured he would live the rest of his life as a man who had written a Great American Novel. He chose well.
Not that it looked that way to begin with. There was pre-publication disgust at a supposedly serious novel that resorted to visceral horror-movie splatter, and post-publication reviews that condemned the book as a nasty piece of work. But the tide turned - Easton Ellis himself considers a rave review by British novelist Fay Weldon in The Washington Post to have been the turning point.
My guess is that initially people in the media felt rather too satirised themselves by the book. Bateman worked on Wall Street. But plenty of people in the media had embraced the same sort of life - Manhattan loft decked in the "right" furniture and the "right" contemporary art, happening restaurants, designer clothes of impeccable provenance. American Psycho showed the elite what was on the end of its fork. It took them a while to catch up to the fact that they could feel the fear and do it anyway. Today, bankers are still portrayed as criminals.