American Psycho NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (828)
See it if Saw this years ago, never reviewed it here. Ben Walker was very good. Brought me back to the 80s, fashion and sayings. Great directionandset
Don't see it if If you dont like vulgarity. If you like the book better. It's better then the movie for sure.graphic scenes.
See it if You can laugh at the whole complete silliness of it all. It's a lot funnier than I expected.
Don't see it if You don't like 80's music.
See it if /for outstanding dance, set/lighting and acting particularly lead Benjamin Walker; hilarious skewering of 1980s Wall St. narcissism/anomie
Don't see it if you don't enjoy forgettable music or ambiguous twist at end that is both mind-blowing and a cop-out; are not in to campy horror
See it if you want a solid companion piece to the novel and film and you yearn for some 80's nostalgia.
Don't see it if morbidity and sociopathy are not your cup of tea.
See it if You love the book or movie, or are interested in darkly comic musicals that are different than traditional Broadway fare.
Don't see it if You can't stomach blood or murder, want fluffy fun, or disliked the movie.
See it if you want to see an original, quirky show that can leave you feeling uncomfortable when you laugh, with great staging and choreography.
Don't see it if you are easily embarrassed by raunchy, sexual content and language or if you want to see a classic, sweet musical.
See it if If you were in NYC in the 1990s you might enjoy the references. Staging & lighting are interesting & surprising. Acting is fine, topic not
Don't see it if You are offended by murder and don't want to see it occur on stage.
See it if you want to be blown away by incredible music, performances, staging, energy. This show is beyond brilliant.
Don't see it if you want a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. While I love R&H, this does so much more than entertain. It invigorates and challenges
Critic Reviews (77)
“‘American Psycho’ is a mess. That’s not because of all that sloppy, sloshy blood, but because of its terminally undecided tone. And it’s not the kind of mess you wallow in, hooting at the glorious chaos of it all. Its conflicts of intention cancel one another out, leaving you numb...Mr. Walker, who oozed charisma in ‘Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,’ holds the show together, for sure...Mostly, though, this psycho is neither scary nor sexy, nor is the show in which he appears.”
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"Rupert Goold’s production looks terrific...Fans of Bret Easton Ellis’s gruesome 1991 novel, and especially of Mary Harron’s less explicit 2000 film version, will scream with delighted recognition, and there are sharp performances...Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s adaptation emphasizes (perforce) humor over gore and tries to hint at a sensitive soul behind Patrick’s sleek facade. But numbness sets in...Neither the violence nor the satire can cut very deep when its targets are so thin."
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“Only the point of the show is invisible. Everything else is on vulgar display...What could the musical’s director and authors have thought they were bringing to the musical form by applying it to this material or to this material by squeezing it so sloppily into the tube of the musical form?...The combination of vague rhymes and noodly structures makes for songs with no profile and thus no weight in the storytelling...Bateman’s a bore.”
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“Is it a first-rate musical? Not quite...But the show is a very sharp, distinctly theatrical treatment of its source material, in many ways improving on Mary Harron's movie version from 2000...Walker is charismatic and commanding, but it's the broken, corrosively conflicted aspects of his characterization that make the performance so hypnotic...Even with its flaws, the musical is a bloody good time.”
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"Did he or didn’t he? That’s the question at the soulless heart of the Broadway musical centered on everyone’s favorite fictional ax-wielding ’80s antihero (Benjamin Walker, staggeringly good)...If you can resign yourself to the story’s innate ambiguity, you’re in for a perversely enjoyable experience. The script captures , and deftly skewers, all of the 1980s’ most over-the-top obsessions...Sheik’s bizarrely catchy, entirely electronic score plays like something blaring at Tunnel in 1989."
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"There’s no heart but lots of blood in Duncan Sheik and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s witty musical treatment of the scandalous novel...Director Goold serves up the greedy ’80s vibe with knife-edge tech design and razor-sharp musical choices…The staging is consistently stylish, and the well-drilled ensemble work is consistently impressive. Nevertheless, the second act is disappointing. The humor is less manic, the songs less cutting, and, more critically, the violence is not violent enough."
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“Slick, sleek and empty, a one-joke show that drowns its message, such as it is, in red sauce and fake emotion...Mr. Walker plays Bateman as a ripped hipster, which is just right...Some of Mr. Sheik’s songs are quite harmonically fresh...You’ll find its wit elephantine and its lapses into sentiment hypocritical. The only good thing to be said for the show is that the onstage bloodshed has been self-consciously reduced to a highly stylized minimum.”
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"You leave both dazzled and disappointed...Sometimes it’s imaginative. At other times, boring and uncertain. And at nearly three hours, always too long. The pointless finale, in which Patrick asks the audience to like him, suggests that what we’ve just seen has been an illusion. Sterility sets in, diluting the entire enterprise. Despite my reservations, it’s worth seeing for the flamboyant effects and for Benjamin Walker’s spectacular, unflagging charisma."
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