It’s natural that the high-wattage glow of “Spring Awakening” would cast a shadow over the rest of Duncan Sheik’s stage career. It was, after all, not just a critical and commercial hit but also an epochal marker that shook musical theater in the mid-2000s and is regularly revived — a new Off Broadway production starts previews on Nov. 27 at Studio Seaview.
But Sheik, who died on Thursday at the age of 56, was not a one-show man, and it is really worth (re)discovering his score for a critical flop: the poisonous confection “American Psycho.” In translating synth pop to a theatrical format, Sheik matched what he did with rock in “Spring Awakening.”
Based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same title, “American Psycho” is set at the tail end of the 1980s and is told from the perspective of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street banker with a sideline in serial killing. The premise inspired in Sheik a new wave-inflected mélange of catchy melodies and detached cynicism, broad satire and malevolent misanthropy. And while he wrote only the music for “Spring Awakening,” he was responsible for the “American Psycho” lyrics and music as well as its orchestrations. (The sound designer Dan Moses Schreier said that most of the music for the show was “performed live off of two laptop computers” using a digital audio workstation.)
The juxtaposition of tones and sensibilities — often in the same number — in Rupert Goold’s production and Sheik’s songs threw many people off, along with the predominantly electronic sound. Broadway audiences didn’t respond well and most critics panned it; the show’s run there lasted a mere 81 performances in 2016.
Sheik’s score was not nominated for a Tony Award (he won two, plus a Grammy, for “Spring Awakening”), but, hey, it was a busy season and nobody stood a chance against “Hamilton.” The New York production did not get a cast album either, so we have to make do with the London one, with its occasionally iffy American accents.
Broadway is not the most daring place when it comes to pushing the sonic envelope. (Sheik’s latest show, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen,” is debuting Off Broadway on Sept. 25 at the Night Egg in Manhattan.) So the synthetic textures of “American Psycho” were and remain an audacious choice. “Clean,” for example, a hauntingly dreamy tale from the dead-souled winners of the capitalistic rat race, is as catchy as anything by the Human League and as menacing as anything by Gary Numan.
The earworm “Killing Spree” sounds right at home in the company of the actual 1980s classics that are also included in the show, like New Order’s “True Faith.” It might have been a hit in an alternate universe where it’s fine to have coldly brutal lyrics coming out unfiltered from a mind unencumbered by emotion or, you know, basic humanity.
Sheik pulled back from the purely synthetic final number, “This Is Not an Exit,” which evokes the swooping lyricism of “Spring Awakening.” Except that in the song Bateman reflects on the pointlessness of it all. The lesson is that there is no lesson: “It’s not a fable / It’s not an allegory / No cautionary tale, no memento mori / Or a vague perhaps.”
It’s no surprise that this did not go over well on Broadway back then, but the narrative may be changing. Goold’s revival in London earlier this year was generally well received and an Off Broadway revival has been announced for 2027. In our world of tech overlords, “American Psycho” could sound better than ever.
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