Book, Music and Lyrics: Stephen Dolginoff
Director: Gerald Armin
Stephen Dolginoff’s dark two-hander musical returns to London in a particularly stripped-back production by Gerald Armin. Based on the real-life case of two young men who murdered a boy in 1924 to prove that they were Nietzschean supermen, Thrill Me, now over 20 years old, has garnered a cult following and already Waterloo East has added more shows to its run due to demand.
It was last seen in London at The Hope Theatre in 2019 in a production by Matthew Parker, which then transferred to Jermyn Street Theatre in 2022. Perhaps aware that Dolgonoff’s songs sound pretty much alike, Parker and set designer Rachel Ryan gave the audience plenty to look at instead. But at Waterloo East, the stage is bare apart from some boxes and the keyboards (played by Richard Seaman) are tucked away behind a curtain.
Armin doesn’t make enough of the stage, keeping the infamous killers close at all times, apart from the best number of the night, My Glasses, when Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold talk through the aftermath via telephone from different ends of the stage. Saving this one occasion, Nathan is usually wrapped around the much taller Richard, begging pathetically for love and sex. The men’s relationship is curiously unsexy, however.
Jamie Kaye as Nathan has a fine voice, especially when he hits the higher notes, but there’s something ugly about Nathan’s neediness that is unsettling when subtlety may have been more effective. Rufus Kampa’s dapper Richard is aloof and bullying, but so much so that it’s hard to fathom what Nathan sees in the man to agree to take part in such a horrific crime.
The story of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold endures because of Rope, Hitchcock’s film based on the novel by Patrick Hamilton and then reimagined in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. Their murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks was hailed at the time by the newspapers as “the crime of the century”, and Dolginoff’s Thrill Me will continue their fame, even if this new production is a little too workmanlike.
Runs until 2 May 2026
