Re-review: American Psycho, Almeida

“You’ll see why Santa loves the snow”

It’s turning out to be quite the month for revisits of shows – I had a pair of tickets for American Psycho which I passed onto a friend after I was lucky enough to be invited to the press night, thinking it would be fairer to let someone else get to see the show as it was sold out. But after a drunken night out and some research on my phone, we discovered a few stray tickets (assumedly returns) were available for purchase on the Almeida’s website and after an evening of lemonades, my benevolence wasn’t quite so persistent…

My companion hadn’t seen it so I didn’t feel quite as guilty as I might have, and I really enjoyed the show so was looking forward to seeing it again, even after a relatively short interval. My thoughts from last time are here and so I’ll just concern myself with a few observations here. Matt Smith clearly loves an adlib, the revolve broke down again and he flirted a little with the stagehand trying to fix it; in the final number, it is actually Ben Aldridge doing a lot of the heavy lifting with the singing; and it really is impressive how effective Sheik’s score is in focusing almost entirely on setting the mood of the piece rather than furthering the narrative.

I do wonder if it will get the West End transfer that some have talked about though. The show thrives on Matt Smith’s excellent central performance and if he had committed to a proper extension, one imagines we’d’ve heard about it by now (but they could always recast the lead). It does also benefit from the intimacy of the theatre though: the show could scale up its size fairly easily, the striking visuals strong enough to cope with amplification, but there would be something lost in the vastness of a West End house so I’d definitely recommend trying to track down tickets here and now. 

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes (with interval)
Programme cost: £5, and worth the purchase for its great content
Photos from the Mr Porter website, one of the show's sponsors
Booking until 1st February, run sold out but day tickets and there’s often returns available on the website, checking late at night worked for us!

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