‘American Psycho” opened on Broadway last night, and count Donald Trump among the victims of the 1980s musical’s antihero investment banking serial killer Patrick Bateman.
Trump features prominently in Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial 1991 cult novel, and there were several references to the Republican Presidential front-runner in previews of “American Psycho.” But comical mentions of Trump in the violent musical, which opened at the Schoenfeld Theatre in New York last night, are now down to two.
American Psycho director Rupert Goold said: “We put five or six references to him in previews, but there are only two left.” The references to The Donald in the 1980s—playing up his pomposity and book “The Art of the Deal”—was a hit with audiences, but the show’s running time got cut on its way to opening, and Trump was a victim of the cuts. “We were clocking in at almost three hours and for a dark musical comedy that was long, so some of those Trump references had to go,” said Benjamin Walker, who plays Bateman.
“American Psycho” began life in 2013 at London’s Almeida Theatre, but now the blood count has been upped, as Bateman mutilates his victims to the sound of a synth-pop score by Duncan Sheik as well as re-interpreted ’80s classics by New Order and The Human League.
“It was a complaint in London that it wasn’t bloody enough but with this production there’s a lot of blood on stage,” author Ellis told Heat Street. “People in the front row have complained about being splattered by fake blood. In the second act Benjamin Walker is covered in blood in his underwear and there’s a pile of real and fake mutilated bodies in the middle of the stage.”
Director Goold said:”That [more blood] was partly a more practical issue, but also I was coy for the London production and nervous about scaring my audience away. The feedback I got was we want it to be a bit scary. We don’t go to the extremes of the book and the blood is used sparingly, but we wanted it to be visually arresting.”
Bateman is often described as a Reaganite extremist, but Goold added that his politics are all over the place: “He’s incoherent that way. He espouses neocon values but in the show he has a rant that is liberal. He swallows op-eds and regurgitates phrases he reads. He is socially and culturally autistic and is trying to fit in.”
The author added he liked the show. “I honestly don’t know if I’m excited or if I’m relieved that it ended up much better than I thought it was going to be,” Ellis said. “Do I have little qualms with it? Sure. But I can say I did not expect to like it and I ended up liking it quite a bit.
“I was dreading it. This was an experimental novel that I really didn’t think anyone was going to read, and it becomes a Broadway show. It felt like a bad dream, like you wake up and say, ‘I had the weirdest dream last night. They turned American Psycho into a musical, and I was flown to New York and had to sit in a theater and watch it!'”
Reviews for the show have been good and bad, but Ellis said the musical chimes with the times: “It’s very much of the moment because it’s a deconstruction of the 1% white male rage, anger and frustration and bankers as serial killers—all of these things resonate right now.”
The women in the show—Bateman’s girlfriend Evelyn and his secretary crush Jean—are played by Helene York and Jennifer Damiano. “We have a young millennial audience, more of a cult following,” Damiano said. “It’s not totally for tourists!”
At an early stage of development, the Hollywood star Amanda Seyfried was in the running to play Evelyn. “We met,” said Gould, “and she was talking about doing some theater but quite quickly we established she wasn’t free. She’d be really good for it, actually.”
Did Walker want audiences to like Bateman by the end? “That’s up to them,” he replied. “I think a lot of people do and some people absolutely don’t.” Did he like the character? “I don’t know.”