American Psycho: Thirteen Years & Three Productions

The Show That Doesn't Go Away

I’ve been designing shows for around twenty years now, and it’s rare, almost unheard of, to design the same musical three times, with largely the same creative team, across three very different political and cultural moments. American Psycho has given me that strange privilege.

The show first premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2013, at a moment when the phrase toxic masculinity was only just beginning to enter mainstream discourse. There was a growing, sometimes uneasy conversation about what a man’s role might be in contemporary society, and Patrick Bateman became a disturbingly useful lens through which to examine that question.

The second incarnation arrived on Broadway in 2016, shortly after the Brexit vote, and at the point where Donald Trump was emerging as a defining political figure bringing with him a whole new, very public articulation of toxic masculinity. Trump felt, in many ways, like a direct descendant of Bateman’s New York and Bret Easton Ellis’s 1980s: the same excess, the same entitlement, the same hollow bravado.

And now, we find ourselves back at the Almeida again, more than a decade after the original production, and in an even darker moment in discourse around masculinity, violence, race and feminism.  Once again, Patrick Bateman feels uncomfortably relevant.

On a far more positive note, this revival also marks the beginning and the end of Rupert Goold’s thirteen-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Almeida; an era which, in my view, has made it one of the most exciting and relevant theatres in London. The Almeida has consistently championed work that feels urgent, politically engaged, and creatively ambitious. Being part of that story, and closing this particular chapter with American Psycho, feels deeply significant.

2013: Naivety, Speed, and Not Knowing Any Better

When we made American Psycho in 2013, I had only been designing professionally for about five years. It was my first musical. I’d worked extensively in opera and dance, so music wasn’t unfamiliar, but contemporary musical theatre, particularly something straddling original score and pop idioms, was new territory.

The challenge was learning how to translate the rhythm and energy of that music into a visual world.

The original design was elegant & simple: a white, perspectival room: Patrick's apartment. The initial brief was restrained; a little bit of blood, and not much else. But very quickly, it became clear that video was going to play a far more central role than we’d anticipated. In hindsight, I probably didn’t fully grasp how central it was until we were already on stage.

What followed was a kind of beautifully organised chaos. We were often working two or three numbers ahead of ourselves, inventing a visual language on the fly as tech moved at breakneck speed. Early ideas weren’t working, so we had to reinvent the show while it was already happening. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.

I have incredibly fond memories of that process; Jonathan Lyle programming sequences ahead of what was even being rehearsed, often blind; Adam Young animating furiously several numbers ahead all while I was trying to absorb what was unfolding in front of me and shape it into a show . There was no time to overthink. No time for preciousness. No room for navel-gazing.

Looking back now, I can see the naivety and simplicity in that work. But I can also see that those qualities were its strength. Everything was immediate. Everything was instinctive. The design responded because it had to.

One early device was the idea of Patrick Bateman’s “serial killer notebook”—a visual manifestation of his internal monologue that appeared whenever he broke the fourth wall. It evolved constantly during the show, but it’s interesting in retrospect because it speaks to a deeper question at the heart of the show.

For me, American Psycho has always been less about literal violence and more about a fantasy of violence. Bateman is deeply ill, trapped in a world he despises, and living in a time that has no language - or willingness - to address his mental health and for a man to have his emotional needs met. The violence, in my reading, is a form of escape. A tool he uses to separate himself from his clone like friends and adversaries. A psychological release. Whether or not those acts are “real” is, to me, deliberately ambiguous - and that ambiguity is essential to the characters' descent through the show.

The 2013 video design was rough, raw, and far from perfect. The technology we had to work with was limited.  We used Catalyst to crudely video map Patrick's apartment with two not especially bright projectors.  But the result was was immediate, popular with audiences, and remains one of the hallmarks of my career. It felt new. It felt dangerous. And it felt right for its moment.  All of this has helped it attain a cult like status amounts theatre fans.  

2016: Hindsight, Technology, and Implied Darkness

By the time we arrived on Broadway in 2016, the world, and my own experience, had shifted.Politically, figures like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump had dragged regressive, nostalgic masculinity back into the centre of public discourse & events like Brexit undid long standing ideas. These men felt like relics from Bateman’s world, trying to reimpose outdated values on a contemporary society. It was a potent backdrop for the show.

Professionally, I had four more years of experience and several more musicals behind me. This was also my first Broadway musical, having previously designed plays & opera there, and that came with its own pressure and exhilaration.

Technologically, things had moved on too. Video mapping a scenic environment was far more achievable with tools like Disguise and due to being a large proscenium arch theatre we had 10 projectors instead of 2. And crucially, we had time—time to reflect, edit, and be deliberate.

One major change was the removal of the serial killer notebook. We realised it pushed the audience too firmly toward believing the murders were literal. Instead, we leaned into a visual language that suggested a fractured mental state: broken television signals, 1980s MTV aesthetics, and an implied darkness rather than explicit depiction. This shift made the show more sinister, not less. The violence lived unchecked but just beneath the surface.

Broadway also allowed us more space, literally and figuratively. The set could expand and contract, giving a stronger visual arc and allowing moments of release and spectacle without losing the edge. That edge was essential. It would have been very easy to turn Bateman’s world into a camp parody of the 1980s, with the violence reduced to a gimmick. We were careful not to do that.

The Broadway run was creatively exhilarating, even if it was commercially short-lived. Audiences were enthusiastic. Critics less so. The show didn’t last - but it did result in Tony Award nominations for Es & Myself for Best Scenic Design and Justin Townsend for Best Lighting Design, which was deeply affirming for the entire team.

And then American Psycho went quiet for 10 years.

2026: Rules, Restraint, and Coming Home

Over the years, whenever we reunited as a creative team, on Spring Awakening, Tammy Faye, and other projects, there was always talk of American Psycho. A sense that it had unfinished business. So when the Almedia emailed in the summer of 2025 to say Rupert wanted to revive it as his final production at the Almeida, I was genuinely delighted.

This time, the question wasn’t whether to reproduce an earlier version, but how to respond to a world that now felt almost unrecognisable compared to 2016. The return of Trump, the rise of Andrew Tate, the explosion of incel culture; Patrick Bateman felt more relevant, and more dangerous, than ever.

The script had evolved, and so had my own thinking. Certain design choices from earlier productions now felt glib, even irresponsible. In the number Not A Common Man, for example, earlier versions used neon figures to visualise a kind of stylised orgy. In 2025, that felt far too pop, far too detached from the brutality of the moment. We needed something darker, harder, and more unsettling.

This led the production towards a radically simplified approach.  The design language was stripped back to three core elements: analog noise, block text, and gradients. That was it. Those elements could combine and mutate, but the restriction was intentional. Over the years, I’ve learned how powerful self-imposed rules can be; not just as constraints, but as tools for clarity. Equally important is knowing when to break those rules.

Nearly every show needs a moment, often in act two, where the visual language fractures. Where the audience is pulled somewhere unexpected. That rupture is vital to give a pivotal moment the significance it needs. But once you break the rules, you have to rebuild them quickly, to restore the world and re-centre the audience.

The only video surface was a large LED floor that helped tell the story, drive the energy and respond to the performers all evening. 

This time around, I kept everything deliberately minimal, doing as much as possible inside the media server. Simple gestures - advancing frames on beats, layering white noise, introducing analogue degradation - became expressive tools. The palette stayed consistent, evolving and contracting across the evening, always working in service of the performer, the choreography, and the music. Collaboration was everything.

Working again with Jon Clark on lighting was a joy. Our dialogue was instinctive. Often no discussion was needed - we’d simply respond to each other in real time, adjusting colour, rhythm, and texture until it felt right. That kind of trust is rare, and it makes ambitious work possible in challenging spaces like the Almeida.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

I’m immensely proud of this version of American Psycho. I haven’t had this much fun in a theatre in a long time. I’m deeply grateful to animator Letty Fox, to the Almeida team, and to everyone who has made that building such an open, generous, and creatively brave place over the past thirteen years.

In many ways, it feels like coming home. I feel as though my musical theatre career began at the Almeida, and returning now - with more experience, more confidence, but the same core instincts - has been both humbling and energising. Some things, it turns out, haven’t changed at all.

Don’t overthink. Don’t be precious. Listen carefully. Respond quickly. Trust the people around you. Those principles were true thirteen years ago, and they’re still true now.

Whether this is the end of the road for American Psycho or not remains to be seen. But for me, these three productions stand as markers along my own creative journey, as ways of measuring how I’ve changed, and how I haven’t.

More than anything, they remind me that the work is at its best when the collaboration is honest, when the subject feels urgent, and when you’re lucky enough to sit in a dark room with a group of brilliant collaborators, trying to tell a story together.

Finn Ross, January 2026