Y
eah, it’s definitely
happening!
Have
you not seen?” The
guy behind the
counter at the
Almeida Theatre’s
cafe is practically
shouting in his
excitement. “The
Twittersphere is
buzzing with it...
The Twittersphere,
the Facebooksphere,
the Bloggosphere.
All the spheres.”
Considering the venue, there’s only one thing he can
be talking about. The musical adaptation of Bret Easton
Ellis’
American Psycho
arrives on the London stage this
month surfing a word-of-mouth wave that started way
back in April. Yes, that’s right. The story of Patrick
Bateman – a morally corrupt, immaculately groomed
yuppie who slays colleagues and prostitutes with axe
and chainsaw – is being turned into an all-singing, all-
dancing show, complete with, one hopes, high kicks
and jazz hands.
It might be the announcement of
Dr Who’
s Matt
Smith in the role of Bateman that’s got the internet
buzzing like a bee hive in a forest fire. But, even prior to
this, the concept has inspired an extraordinary
response. Not only did the production’s first run sell
out almost immediately, but the Kickstarter campaign
that partially funded the venture was a blazing success,
raising $150,000 in just four weeks with donations
from the public.
Perhaps it’s because donors were offered
commemorative merchandise with knowing touches
(business card USB sticks, anyone?) but more likely
it’s down to the fact that Ellis’s book has risen to
unquestionably iconic status since it was first published
in 1991. Despite (or, let’s face it, partly because of) an
initial critical reception describing it as “meaningless”
“shlock” “garbage”, as well as various high-profile bans,
it’s become one of the most popular works of recent
American fiction. Selling over 1.6million copies, it’s
gathered fans for its blacker-than-black humour and
Ellis’ ahead-of-his-time, hatchet job on yuppie culture.
There’s no question that part of the continuing
resonance of the novel comes from its anti-hero, whose
obsession with social status and hilarious, opinionated
ramblings about Apollinaris mineral water, the musical
works of Genesis, Italian seasoning salt, $500 haircuts
and sea-urchin ceviche prefigured the rise of today’s
breed of metrosexual, product-obsessed urbanites.
In 2000 Christian Bale made the character his own
on film, winning a new legion of admirers and gifting
the world an arsenal of unmistakable cultural
references. Moo business cards (
moo.com
) even have
a Patrick Bateman range, although it’s not clear from the
website if they’re ‘bone silian rail’ or ‘raised lettering,
pale nimbus, white”.
I remember watching the movie with some of my
schoolmates, taking a teenage delight in the take down of
the pop culture gods of our childhood as well as
delightfully black-comic scenes that marry music
appreciation with axe murder. “Do you like Phil Collins?”
So I guess I was worried, when I headed down to leafy
Islington where rehearsals were in full flow, about how
this was going to work. Was the world, I wondered,
ready for a third incarnation of Bateman’s story? Could a
stage show be anything but a pale echo compared to
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