"I am drawn to theatre as an art form of surprise and of provocation," says the Almeida's artistic director Rupert Goold, while backstage at rehearsals for American Psycho, the stage adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel about late 80s excess and violence in New York.
An artists' group called SIcoLab, pronounced "psycho lab," staged an "artistic demonstration," according to Frank Williams, a co-founder.
This article was amended on 24 April 2013 to clarify that the musical based on American Psycho is staged by London's Almeida theatre and Headlong.
I can't remember that much about it, except that it was all about some young, romantic, sex-obsessed man and how his cruel and feckless treatment of a lovely girl – in the Father Ted sense – was punished by the eponymous Magus with a series of real-life psycho-dramas staged in the Cyclades.
That's why he's starring as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho – a musical stage version of American Psycho, in fact.
From Shakespearean classics to a musical rendition of American Psycho, the British-born stage director has a penchant for taking celebrated texts and reconfiguring them for modern times.
Further, the powerful influence of these macro-economic forces on young women's sexual behaviour is compounded by their particular stage of psycho-social development, which is characterized by a pre-occupation with outward appearance, role confusion, vulnerability to peer pressure, and propensity for risk taking behaviour [ 22, 23, 35].
But their daughter (who as an actress had memorable minor roles in "Strangers on a Train," "Stage Fright" and "Psycho") dislikes that Alma is never "singled out as an artist in her own right".
Smith beat Doc Martin's Martin Clunes, Call the Midwife's Miranda Hart and Downton Abbey's Dame Maggie Smith but was unable to attend the event as he is currently appearing in American Psycho on the West End stage.
