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"American Psycho" shouldn't work as a musical. The show about a Wall Street yuppie who may or may not be a serial killer, based on Bret Easton Ellis' controversial novel, is garish, vulgar and cynical — but that's exactly why it succeeds in this visionary production by Houston Broadway Theatre.
The show, with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, really has no peers in musical theater. That likely explains the divisive reactions. "Sweeney Todd" is an easy but lazy comparison. Despite the, um, meaty plot, it's a traditional musical built on the Stephen Sondheim signature: lush, sweeping and unmistakably Broadway.
"American Psycho" is a living, breathing entity that blatantly subverts theatrical tropes. It dares you to laugh and sing along as Patrick Bateman descends into madness. It was a hit when it premiered in London but struggled on Broadway, where it ran for just 54 performances. But if you know, you know. This production is campy and cynical, smart and funny, feverish and transgressive. It's the best piece of theater I've seen this year.
Sheik and Aguirre-Sacasa have made changes to songs, scenes and characters for the Houston production, all the way up through opening night. It all works together beautifully. The result is exquisitely staged and ferociously acted, bold and audacious in its view of sex, success and self-worth. A newly added scene featuring Donald Trump in an elevator drew big laughs. Director Joe Calarco has a keen understanding of the unique nature of the show and how to translate it onstage.
You're immersed in late-'80s excess the moment you step inside Zilkha Hall at Hobby Center. The lobby has been transformed into Video Visions, the store Bateman frequents between murders. There are rows of video tapes — "Back to the Future," "Heathers," "Buns of Steel" — on shelves, bags of popcorn and candy and a checkout area behind a red velvet rope. The playbills, displayed on magazine racks, are designed as glossy magazines with slick photography. It's a genius detail.
But "American Psycho" can only be as devilishly good as its leading man. Robert Lenzi is killer, in every sense of the word, as Bateman. He's cold and calculating, but there's an undeniable pathos in his paranoia. Lenzi's movie star looks and chiseled physique embody the physical ideal that Bateman strives for. The opening monologue, "Mo(u)rning Routine" — "I use a honey-almond wash on my ripped body, and an exfoliating spearmint gel on my face ... — encapsulates everything that makes Lenzi so good, an artful balance of performance, intention and wit.
The entire cast, perhaps energized by the reworkings of the show, performs at a glorious full tilt. Everyone is on the same wavelength, polished and lacquered with '80s vapidness. Aguirre-Sacasa's book greatly expands on the female characters. Owen Claire Smith is blonde perfection as Evelyn Williams, Bateman's clueless girlfriend. What Smith accomplishes here is truly extraordinary, using broad, cartoonish strokes to create a performance grounded in intelligence and empathy. Her "You Are What You Wear" duet with Jacquelyne Paige as BFF Courtney Lawrence is Madonna's "Vogue" by way of "Legally Blonde" and one of the show's best moments.
As Jean, Bateman's lovestruck secretary, Chiara Trentalange feels as if she has been dropped in from another musical, something more standard and traditional. She's an ingenue love interest trapped in a corporate hellscape, out of place among the designer zombies. But it feels intentional, crystallized during her Act Two ballad "A Girl Before," a wry send-up of showtune tropes. Sheik's entire score brilliantly subverts what we've come to expect from musicals. It's prickly and sneering with an icy sheen of electronic pop gloss.
Tyce Green is all corporate smarm as Bateman's best friend Timothy Price, conveying it gleefully through his delivery and facial expressions. Paul Schwensen is the perfect, soulless Ken doll as Paul Owen, whose success is an ongoing source of agitation for Bateman. Schwensen and Lenzi have a strong chemistry, particularly in the climactic "Hip to be Square" scene. Kaye Tuckerman expertly captures the brittle humor of Bateman's mother. Ethan Achee, a senior at Sam Houston State University, is impressive in a number of roles, including Bateman's cynical younger brother.
Timothy Mackabee's set is stunning, a geometric display of white blocks that mirror the show's sleek sterility. It feels like a doctor's office, a morgue and so many generic high-rises and corporate offices all at once. A wall of screens evoked the "Club MTV" set, the show where beautiful people danced to late-'80s music videos. It's complemented by Robert J. Aguilar's crisp lighting and Jason H. Thompson's nostalgic video projections.
Perhaps the most horrifying thing about "American Psycho" is that it's not just a time capsule of '80s excess — it's a mirror that reflects, refracts and diffracts where we are today.