When Alexander Berlage directed Cry-Baby at the Hayes Theatre last year he worked wonders. The 1950s rockabilly musical, based on John Waters’ film, had received decidedly mixed reviews in the US, but Berlage’s kooky production knocked audiences for six. It was so perfectly pitched and so deliciously funny that it won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production of a Musical (up against shows including The Book of Mormon) as well as three other awards including Best Direction of a Musical.

Ben Gerrard as Patrick Bateman. Photograph © Clare Hawley

Berlage has done it again with his brilliantly staged production of American Psycho The Musical, finding just the right vein of slick, dark, heightened satire to make the show click for today’s audiences. Written by Duncan Sheik (music and lyrics) and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (book), the musical is based on Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious 1991 novel about Patrick Bateman, a handsome, young, successful Wall Street investment banker who does financial deals by day and murders people, mostly women, by night.

Set in the “Greed is Good” era, Bateman – who is obsessed with Donald Trump – swans his way through a world...