Not the easiest of plays to get one’s head around, The Billionaire Inside Your Head is an exploration of what may or may not be obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) – to the play’s credit, the term is not, to the best of my recollection, explicitly used in the show, and the person who allegedly has it, Richie (Nathan Clarke) never self-diagnoses himself with it. His friend from school days, Darwin (Ashley Margolis) shares a basement office with him, and Darwin’s mother, Nicole (Allison McKenzie), chief executive, is on the top floor of a debt collection agency that is apparently big enough to have an entire office tower all to itself.
Direct addresses to the audience from ‘The Voice’ (also McKenzie) were well received on press night, even if the character might beg to differ. Some intriguing examples of how voices in one’s head might be able to influence and directly manipulate a person’s behaviour have more than a touch of absurdism to them, but they make a dramatic point sufficiently well enough, namely that there are ‘voices’, whether stemming from ‘inside’ or an external influence, that really could make someone do things that are unnecessary, irrational, bizarre or downright destructive to themselves.
For this production, the ‘downstairs’ (that is, the studio) space at Hampstead has a ‘traverse’ performance space, or if you please, a catwalk – and indeed the characters do come across as models almost marching up and down a catwalk, usually going to their office desk, situated as they were at one end of the stage or the other. A smaller studio setting means it is less of a proverbial tennis match than it would have been in a larger space, whenever two characters, usually Richie and Darwin (or is it Darwin and Richie?), are standing at opposite ends engaged in dialogue.
The show captures, arguably a tad too well, the mundanity of corporate office life, with both Richie and Darwin, in markedly different ways, trying to break the monotony with conversation, including talk of their dreams and ambitions. But Richie still thinks, as he has done since childhood, that he is destined to be a billionaire, though his plan to achieve an astronomical bank balance is, to be diplomatic, lacking in finer details. He has at least grasped that he can’t become super-rich by working for someone else. This wouldn’t be the first show to come along that asks questions about whether the rat race is really worth running (answer, hardly a spoiler: no, not really), but this production paints a portrait of complicated characters, Richie in particular trying to make the best of his life, full of drive and ambition, even if it is somewhat misplaced.
A minor point (well, maybe) – the office environment in this show is highly paper-based, which was surprising in a play modern enough to reference social media and Peaky Blinders. There’s not a telephone in sight, let alone a computer. It could well be that such things are distractions from the narrative, but it still struck me as odd that the company’s filing system is entirely on paper, with nothing computerised. Then again, perhaps the show is making the point that modern technology isn’t entirely to blame for the psychological well-being struggles the Richies of this world are facing. An intriguing and irreverent tale about the destructive power of the love of money, it’s a hundred minutes well spent.
Review by Chris Omaweng
‘There’s a very rich man inside you, Richie. Inside that crazy head of yours. A good man. An ambitious man. A man who knows exactly what it is he’s going to do when he wakes up every morning, and a man who does exactly that.’
Rise. Grind. Hustle. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Lifelong best friends Richie and Darwin are on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, stuck in the basement together with decades of old case files to work through. Darwin’s morning routine is an episode of Seinfeld and a spliff; Richie’s an ice bath, meditation, and Jack Dorsey’s 7-minute workout.
When an opening becomes available as a Junior Associate, it presents the opportunity to fly up the ranks faster than SpaceX’s latest rocket. The only things that might prevent that awesome LinkedIn update? The voice of Richie’s OCD whose demands are getting harder and harder to keep up with, and the fact that Darwin’s mum just happens to be the CEO calling the shots.
CAST
Richie – Nathan Clarke
Darwin – Ashley Margolis
The Voice / Nicole – Allison McKenzie
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer – Will Lord
Director – Anna Ledwich
Designer – Janet Bird
Lighting Designer – James Whiteside
Sound Designer – Max Pappenheim
Fight and Intimacy Director – Bethan Clark
Associate Fight and Intimacy Director – Robin Hellier
Production Manager – Sean Laing
Costume Supervisor – JD Newman Turner
Stage Manager – Em Cox
THE BILLIONAIRE INSIDE YOUR HEAD
Hampstead Theatre
19 September to 25 October 2025
