Move over Andrew Lloyd Webber: how musicals got real
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It was hardly a surprise that musical theatre became a basket-case late last century. Not only had it overdosed on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sugar-coated soporifics, it also kept banging its head against the twin brick walls of rock-based music and jukebox inanities. No, the surprise was that musical theatre ever regained its health – and it’s done that with bells on.
While straight theatre ties itself in Gordian knots of “relevance” – art is fundamentally good or bad, not relevant or irrelevant – several recent musicals have done something only Stephen Sondheim had previously approached: make the idiom a genuine standard-bearer for theatrical innovation.
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Patrick Bateman, dressed to kill.
Musical / “American Psycho: The Musical”. Music and Lyrics by Duncan Sheik. Directed by Alexander Berlage, The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, to 3 July. Reviewed by
LEN POWER.
IF you can make a musical out of “American Psycho”, you can make a musical out of anything.
Based on the best-selling and controversial 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, it focuses on a young, handsome and wealthy investment banker, Patrick Bateman, in New York City during the Wall Street boom of the 1980s. This man also happens to be a serial killer.
While the book gave shockingly detailed descriptions of the young killer’s murderous actions, the musical focuses more on life in the prosperous decade that enabled young, successful people like Bateman to indulge in chic restaurants, exclusive clubs and designer labels.