Broadway's Take on Wall Street's Woes

First Andrew Lloyd Weber offers London's newly jobless bankers free theater tickets in lieu of paychecks.

Now producers on Broadway are aiming to bridge the finance world with musical theater another way: by putting it on stage, in a new musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' notorious 1991 novel American Psycho.

Yes, American Psycho -- the one about a 1980s-era investment-banker-cum-serial-killer who murders prostitutes with an axe in between outrageously expensive business lunches.

Bring the whole family!

When adapting a book or movie into a musical, there's certain material -- like Legally Blonde or The Lion King -- that lends itself to song and dance.

And then there's American Psycho.

Ellis's novel was adapted into a movie in 1999, which has since become a cult hit. Its target demographic is fairly narrow: men 18 to 34 years old who are, or aspire to be, as power-obsessed as the title character. It's safe to say that's probably not the profile of the average Broadway theatergoer.

But apparently the show's producers -- Johnson-Roessler, the Collective, and XYZ Films -- see potential that we don't. They told the Hollywood Reporter that they were inspired by the frequent mentions of 80s bands in the novel. (The playlist includes Talking Heads, Huey Lewis and the News, and Genesis.)

The producers envision the score comprising covers of some songs as well as original "80s inspired" additions. We're picturing Sweeney Todd with monogrammed dress shirts, suspenders, and lots of synthesizer.

If outfitting a macabre satire of 1980s Wall Street with musical numbers wasn't already a bad idea, it is made especially so by the bizarre timing of the project. Wall Street isn't exactly having a Reagan moment anymore.

Producer David Johnson told the Hollywood Reporter that one of his main inspirations was "the great economic divide in this country" -- which, judging from recent events in the finance sector, is narrowing by the day.

by Liz Gunnison

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