American Psycho
Duncan Sheik (Music & Lyrics); Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
(Book)
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| Kyle Ewalt & Kipp Glass |
How possible is it that having the perfectly tanned body
that has been honed to the hilt so that every muscle tautly glistens, wearing
only the latest and most expensive big-name designer wear, and always eating in
the restaurants where most can never afford or even get reservations – How
possible is it that being this person gives you a free pass to do any atrocity
imaginable and for no one even to blink an eye?
If you are all this and your name is also Patrick Bateman – big-time,
New York investment banker during the Reagan, all-about-me ‘80s -- then what’s
the problem? Being Patrick means you are
home-free to live out your obsession with slasher movies, become in real life
your hero Freddy Krueger, and continue to be everyone’s social kingpin even as
your hands are covered in your victims’ blood. And on top of it all, you get to be center
stage in your $60 Ralph Lauren whitey-tighties in your own musical, American Psycho – now in its slickly
produced West Coast premiere as another Ray of Light boundary-pushing, sight-and-sound-exploding
musical.
Beginning as a controversial 1991 book and becoming a psychological
horror film in 2000, Duncan Sheik (music and lyrics) and Roberto
Aguirre-Sacasa’s (book) musical version of American
Psycho debuted in London in 2013 and in New York in 2015. Critical reception in both locales was mixed
at best, and both runs were short-run; but for Ray of Light Theatre, this is the
perfect challenge. In this current
production of a show full of bloody, horrific, on-stage murders by a totally
disgusting, unlikeable person (but one who is definitely hot eye-candy), ROL once
again surprises and exceeds the expectations of its perennial fans like me –
returning patrons who have come to admire immensely the company’s ability to
take quirky, weird, and rejected-by-most-others musicals and make them
first-class, San Francisco hits.
Immediately in the two opening numbers (“Morning Routine”
and “Selling Out”), we get a taste of the vision Director Jason Hoover has
implemented near flawlessly for Ray of Light’s American Psycho. On the two walls
intersecting in an angular corner (Angrette McCloskey, scenic designer),
eye-popping projections splash advertisements, New York street scenes, and
pop-art-like words like “No, No.” (Video
designer Erik Scanlon’s creations will continue to wow the entire
evening.) Ensemble members dressed in
‘80s correct-black with just the right slits and tears to be extremely club
fashionable (Katie Dowsie, designer) move in mechanistic, robotic patterns with
arms, legs, and bodies coordinated almost as if drawn by a video-game animator
(only a small hint of the evening’s terrifically imaginative and wildly unusual
choreography by Leslie Waggoner). Voices
rise in harmonies both harsh and melodic (Ben Prince, music coordinator) while
splashes of color red, purple, green, orange (but never pastel) begin to set
the evening’s mood through a lighting design by Weili Shi that will later project
blood red on the raised hands of the murderous perpetrator, Patrick Bateman. And after several years of my and other
critics’ complaints about the Victoria Theatre’s sound system, a newly
installed system allows Jerry Girard’s outstanding sound design to reign
supreme, including the pre-recorded, accompanying score (i.e., no live band)
which normally I detest a company using in live theatre.
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| Kipp Glass |
In these first two numbers, the exceptionally tall and
totally svelte Kipp Glass establishes front-and-center the ego-centric,
narcissistic, callous, and greedy nature of his Bateman, trumpeting “I want it
all” while also giving us fair warning with looks dark and foreboding and a
voice with clear edge, “You see me gliding, but there’s something hiding in the
shadow ... uh-oh, uh-oh,” with the “uh-oh’s” echoed in song by the weaving,
pumping, bending ensemble around him and in projection by huge words plastered
on the walls.
As if that were not enough fair warning of what is to come,
Patrick provides more early signs of an eventual breakdown during a meeting of
the high-powered firm as he struts about as he were king – where each hotshot
investor is trying to one-up the other. Bateman is blasted into envy hell when his
competitive nemesis and fellow Pierce and Pierce colleague, Paul Owen – who
does not even get Patrick’s name right – bests him on obtaining an exclusive
account, on securing a reservation at the most desired New York restaurant, and
worst of all, in splashing his new, designer business card in front of
everyone, making the new one Patrick just showed off look like an Office Depot special. The result is a hilarious but telling
“Cards,” with Eric Scalon’s mine-is-bigger-than-yours projections adding to the
humor of the “Oh, Baby, Baby, you’re such a card” sung lyrics.
The casting of Kyle Ewalt as Owen is brilliant in that he
matches in height and body type Kipp Glass’ Bateman, with the two towering over
in both stature and persona all others on stage. However, Owen is a much looser, jovial,
likeable giant of the investment world while still being fiercely competitive,
a bit sleazy, and just as willing as Bateman to snort some coke off a toilet
seat in a late-night club. In both slow
motion and high speed frenzy, the two dance on a floor filled with all the
beautifully dressed in “Killing Time,” giving Kyle Ewalt a chance to show off
his ability to play air guitar with his mile-long, raised leg. Even on the dance floor, he can out-do the
more-and-more pissed-off Patrick who Paul still calls “Marcus” (while unknowingly
also making deprecating remarks in his drug-high, drunken state about Patrick
Bates to the man himself).
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| Melinda Campero, Danielle Altizio, Desiree Juanes, Madeline Lambie, Kirstin Louie, Jill Jacobs |
As Bateman’s frustration with his life and with all the woes
of the world grow closer to a crazed breaking point (something we increasingly
see in his grotesquely frozen grimaces), we meet the women of his life who provide
contrasting portraits of the ‘80s extremes.
His girlfriend, Evelyn (Danielle Altizio) and her bestie, Courtney
(Kirsten Louie) pour forth in fine voice all the big-name designers they both
admire and abhor in “You Are What You Wear,” backed up by runway style women
swiveling their bodies with no obvious 1980s cares except to be seen and to
impress.
On the opposite end of the scale, we meet Patrick’s
assistant, Jean, dressed in her Macy’s rack conservative best, whose admiration
for her boss is sweetly sung in “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” As Jean, Zoey Lytle brings the most
accomplished, most impressive vocals to the evening’s stage (among many
otherwise fine and fully acceptable ones), wowing the audience later in the
story especially with a range from whisper-clear softness to emotion-packed,
full-voiced swells in “A Girl Before.”
The biting parody of the ‘80s is the underlying theme of
this smartly conceived musical. Shallow
lives of shallower people are cleverly illustrated with ‘80s’-booming beats in
the number “Hard Body,” a workout session of the boys from the firm with all their
eyes on the oh-so-hot female trainer as they sing and pump with sweaty broohaha. Beach-and-surf scenes from the hottie-tottie
Hamptons highlight wave-floating conversations on what is the latest,
just-gotta-have, bottled water. (Ouch,
not much has changed in thirty-plus years, has it?)
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| Kipp Glass |
But, OK, we all know that what everyone is waiting for is
the first slash of Patrick’s ax; for the next bash with his nail-studded bat;
and for wire-strangles, electric-saw demonstrations, and even just plain ol’
sprays of bullets. Yes, kids, these are
coming; and they are accompanied by Patrick’s numbers sung first full of gristle-snarled
anger, then of frantic desperation, and finally of resigned guilt. Dancers fall as victims only to rise to fall
again (“Killing Spree”) while the near-naked, blood-spattered Patrick sings “I
Am Back” as floor-strewn bodies echo his disturbing lines while performing
their own unique, lying-prone choreography that is marked with life’s last
shivers. And no matter that the bloody
warning is splashed on the wall for all to see – “Abandon All Hope, You Who
Enter Here” – when you are as hotly in societal demand as Patrick Bateman, you
are sought and welcomed and loved by all, even if only in your underwear and
dripping with the blood while everyone else is dressed in the latest Fifth
Avenue designs.
That such a story could be so much fun to watch and to laugh
out loud; that such a tale could sometimes be showered in rolling harmonies
that fall often like delicate, sung waterfalls; and that seeing bodies doomed
dance in such brilliant and imaginative form even as their demise is about to
occur is a tribute to the brilliance, daring, and chutzpah of the musical’s creators,
this director, and especially Ray of Life as a performing arts company. American
Psycho is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but its means and its ends
are both much more entertaining and message-worthy than many might give it
credit at first glance. (The latter is
especially true in Trump’s America, even with recent gains in finally punishing
bad-boy behavior by the famous and rich, thanks to the MeToo Movement.)
From the viewpoint of a person who has never watched and
will never watch Freddy Krueger or his ilk on the big screen, Ray of Light’s American Psycho is for me a unique
evening of top-notch musical theatre that I heartily and highly recommend.
Rating: 5 E
American
Psycho continues through June 8, 2019 in production by Ray of Light Theatre
at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street, San Francisco, through
October 17, 2015. Tickets are available
online at http://www.victoriatheatre.org/index.php/box-office
or http://rayoflighttheatre.com.
Photo Credit: Ray of Light Theatre
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