Vince Lombardi once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
Nick, son to Max and Hari, feels like he must be perfect for his parents. But Nick strives for an alternative form of excellence. In doing so, he passes away and his parents are left with immense guilt, shame and grief. They deal with this in the most unusual way possible; they buy a semi-sentient AI robot that looks like their son and raise it instead.
Originally written by Thomas Eccleshare in 2018, Instructions for Correct Assembly premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London that same year. Clock & Spiel Productions initially intended to put on the play in 2023 and have successfully done so in 2025. It is remarkable how prescient the writing of AI feels in a post-Chat GPT world that didn’t exist in 2018, and was barely present in 2023. All too eerie how a play can feel more relevant as time goes on.
Director Hailey McQueen handles this play masterfully. The first half hour contains short, sharp, and punchy scenes with genuine humour and wit. After that, the play is coated with a thin layer of loss and regret. As the play skips on, she continues to pack on layers of grief that gives each scene a sense of weight that wasn’t there previously. The laughs still come, but they transform into uncomfortable, caught-in-the-throat sort of laughs. The audience watches both parents use the robot to play into their worst tendencies as a mother and a father.
As Nick’s mother Max, Jane Wallace blends sincerity and subtlety beautifully. As Nick’s father Hari, Nick Curnow plays wonderfully into both the absurdity of his character and his complexities with his wife and deceased son.
Ben Chapple steals the show both as son Nick and his fast-talking robot replacement. Jacki Mison and David Allsopp as Laurie and Paul, the neighbours, alongside Kyra Belford-Thomas as their daughter Kyra, initially lend the play some heightened comedy. And later, they provide some much needed objective perspective.
The talent offstage is just as noteworthy as those onstage. Props and Costume Designer Lulu Ross makes the delineation between the past and the present clear with effective small changes in what the characters wear and hold.
Victor Kalka uses lighting to transition between scenes and also to play with the audience’s expectation as to whether they are watching the real son or the artificial one.
Jacob Parr’s set design is something to behold! An all-white box set, with all white props and clear sections for each room in the house is perfected by a tenuous skirting of mould creeping along the edges. It doesn’t break the facade the family presents, but peels back the layers to reveal how truly broken and hurt these parents really are. Pure genius.
Instructions for Correct Assembly deals with grief in a modern way, asking audiences the question: when we create something, how much control and responsibility over it do we have?
There are two plays this year that have fundamentally altered how I view theatre, and this is one of them. So, if indeed, perfection is not attainable, Clock & Spiel Productions’ Instructions for Correct Assembly is as close to perfection as it gets.
Instructions for Correct Assembly runs until 5 July at Flight Path Theatre, 9b/142 Addison Road Marrickville NSW 2204.
Tickets: https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/whats-on/instructions-for-correct-assembly
Website: https://www.flightpaththeatre.org/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/clockandspielproductions/
Photo credits: Patrick Phillips
