American Psycho The Musical

American Psycho The Musical is probably the most fun you'll have at the theatre all year. 

Director Alexander Berlage's production takes the hyper-masculine, disaffected late capitalist Patrick Bateman, and his bloodthirsty proclivities, of the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel (with nods to the 2000 Mary Harron film, starring Christian Bale), and thrusts him – quite literally – into an overstimulating world of mirrors.

The characters – not just Bateman, played with a glued-on sneer and palpable sense of menace by Ben Gerrard, but also his long-suffering socialite girlfriend, Evelyn (Shannon Dooley), and their friends, lovers and Bateman's victims – jazzercise through set designer Isabel Hudson's revolving stage, through doors cut into a T-shaped wall of mirrors. Their reflections bounce off each other, contributing to a sense that the world they inhabit – marble floors, raised lettering and all – is all about surface. 

Lighting design creates the sense of a claustrophobic New York club scene, or the bright starkness of Bateman's office or apartment, the scene of his gross acts of violence. The stylised way Berlage directs those moments is shocking and clever, leaving us a step apart so we can stay, not sympathetic, but fascinated by Bateman's rapid psychological unravelling.

Those club scenes are made so visceral, as is Bateman's decline, not just by the talents of the actors contorting themselves in nude underwear (thanks to costume designer Mason Browne) and blood-spattered plastic against the walls, but by Musical Director Andrew Worboys and the sound design of Nicholas Walker, creating a swelling undercurrent of overwhelming, sometimes sinister club beats. 

Berlage effectively queers the text; the campness of the '80s covers (Tear For Fears, Phil Collins, and Huey Lewis & The News, of course), set pieces and choreography from Yvette Lee strip – there's plenty of almost-nudity – away some of the bone-chilling aspects of Bateman and leave us instead with something deeply, pointedly funny. A reminder not to take ourselves, or the threats of self-indulgent, alienated fuckboys too seriously.