The Billionaire Inside Your Head, Hampstead Theatre review - a map of a man with OCD

What would it be like to be driven by OCD urges into idolising Elon Musk and aspiring to be one of his tribe of tech bros? In his debut play, Will Lord, who has been diagnosed with OCD himself, has attempted to spell this out, with mixed results.

The scene is a basement office stacked to ceiling height with old cardboard boxes and filing cabinets. At either end is a desk. The audience sits in two long rows in traverse, on either side of the space. Into it strides a ponytailed blonde woman in a white trouser suit who comes on like a fierce motivational speaker, the kind that can lead audiences into cult-like obedience. This is The Voice (Allison McKenzie), and she lives in the head of Richie (Nathan Clarke), a young researcher who slaves away at his desk finding old debts to chase.

The Voice is like a comedy warm-up act, haranguing us for not being honest about our inner lives. In particular, she accuses us of secretly harbouring thoughts of wanting to fuck strangers; letting the thought out will make it more likely to happen, presumably. It doesn’t work for Richie, though, who re-enacts with his officemate and oldest friend Darwin (Ashley Margolis, pictured right, as Stephanie) a disastrous date with a “forward” woman, with Darwin coquettishly standing in for Stephanie, the date. All seemed to be going well until she overheard him saying under his breath that he wanted to fuck their pretty waitress.

It becomes clear that these sotto voce mutterings of Richie’s are his “things”, as Darwin calls them, for coping with the dialogue in his head. Another is tapping his hands four times when his anxiety rises. The Voice is a form of life-coach for him, beefing up his ego to tackle ever more impossible stunts, such as flying out to the SpaceX offices and pitching his ideas to Musk in the lift. She has convinced him he is a winner, with world-beating ideas that will make him filthy rich, enough not to have to worry about anything ever again – which you sense, sadly, is underprivileged Richie’s main goal.

Darwin is his total opposite, a clever slacker whose mother Nicole owns the company they work for. He grew up with Richie and the two have developed little rituals together, prime among them a mimed routine where Darwin “removes” Richie’s nose and then gives it back to him (pictured below). As the entitled corporate-family offspring, Darwin seemingly feels free to smoke dope at his desk and lounge around in sandals and shorts, his curly hair an unruly mop. Both young men are going to be in the running for promotion to Junior Associate.

The relationship between the two is warm and frequently funny – there’s a bravura section where Darwin role-plays being Richie’s personal trainer, putting him through strenuous physical jerks and ending with an icebath in the face. Things get confusing, though, when Darwin’s mother turns up – played by the same actress portraying The Voice, with no change of costume. As Nicole is a tough CEO, the two aren’t that far apart in personality, but it was only when I read the playscript afterwards that I was totally certain which scenes had involved which character.

The performances here are engaging, especially Margolis’s Darwin, a highly articulate man under his slobby exterior, who has an instinctive understanding of power – and of how much luck plays a part in any person’s career trajectory. His dialogue with Richie is often laugh-out-loud witty, whereas his friend is more pitiable. Clarke plays him with a delicate touch, stressing the ludicrous side of his Voice-driven imaginings while staying in touch with his vulnerability and humanity. 

The two inject the text with as much authenticity as they can, but ultimately the whole feels too much like a thematic construct to be totally persuasive drama. You can feel the bones of Lord’s ideas poking through. He gives Richie and The Voice great tracts of speech to deliver – my blue-pencil was dying to hack at least 20 minutes out of it — and key beats can get lost in all the verbiage. It’s niftily designed (Janet Bird), who uses metal cabinets as entrance and exit points, with inventive lighting design by James Whiteside and firm directing by Anna Ledwich. It just doesn’t quite fly to its full potential.

• The Billionaire Inside Your Head at Hampstead Downstairs until 25 October
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk