Award-winning British playwright Thomas Eccleshare’s Instructions for Correct Assembly is currently premiering in Sydney. This witty satire balances black comedy with philosophical depth, following the hilarious yet deeply poignant trajectory of a couple who purchase a flat-pack ‘Build Your Own’ child to cope with the loss of their son. Honi Soit talked to the production’s director, Hailey McQueen, about re-shaping the play for a new temporal and geographic context, and about its central explorations of grief, human relationships, and the desire for perfection.
Hailey McQueen: Absolutely. In 2018, the play’s premise felt like speculative satire. In 2025, it’s almost documentary. We’re living in a moment where generative AI can write your emails, your essays, your code, even your apologies. What was once a quirky thought experiment — “What if you could build the perfect child?” — now lands with unnerving proximity to real-world questions about technological interference, control, and emotional outsourcing.
HM: The original script is deeply rooted in a specific time and place; it relies heavily on the systems and social concerns of the UK. From references to the British education system to topical political debates, much of the play’s original impact came from its sharp observations about life under those particular pressures. And it turns out, satire speaks fluent suburbia, no matter the country. Australia has its own perfectly manicured lawns, overachieving kids, awkward dinner parties, and shelves of self-help books. Whether it’s The Block, Bunnings on a Saturday, or a quiet panic about your child’s NAPLAN results, our suburbia has all the same ingredients, just with more gum trees and fewer cups of tea. By replanting the story here, the play becomes less about those people over there and more about us; our anxieties, our ambitions, and the extreme lengths we go to keep things looking perfect on the outside, while avoiding the mess and pain underneath. It’s funny, yes, but it’s also a little terrifying how far we’ll go to avoid simply sitting with what hurts.
HM: I can’t take credit for that casting decision, it’s written into the script by Thomas Eccleshare himself. Though I wish it had been my idea, because it’s so clever. It’s one of the smartest structural choices in the play, and it lays the foundation for so much of the audience’s emotional and philosophical unease.
The same actor playing both Nick and Jån is central to the play’s interrogation of grief, memory, and the temptation to replicate what’s been lost. For Max and Hari, Jån is not just a new son — he’s a reconstruction, a second draft. By having the same actor play both, we blur the line between what was real and what is reassembled. It’s disconcerting and that’s the point. The audience is constantly negotiating their response. Are they mourning Nick, or mistrusting Jån? Do they see a person, or a product? This duality drives the play’s central tension, the loss of emotional complexity in favour of engineered ease.
PC: What are the emotions you want the audience to come away with after viewing the production? Do you think we can translate emotional reactions to meaningful reflection and change?
HM: We want people to laugh and then catch themselves,to feel the ache under the absurdity. If we’ve done our job well, the audience should leave feeling unsettled, but not hopeless. There’s real heartbreak buried beneath Instructions for Correct Assembly’s witty surface. It’s a story about people trying to avoid feeling too much and in doing so, end up feeling nothing at all.
Theatre has a unique power to disarm. You sit in the dark, you laugh at something ridiculous and then suddenly it hits you: “This is me.” That flash of recognition can spark something deeper than momentary reflection. It plants a question that lingers long after the lights come up.
The play explores our very human urge to fix — to perfect our grief, our children, ourselves. We live under a quiet but relentless pressure to appear successful, composed, and in control. And when we fall short, which of course we all do, the failure can feel enormous. So, we reach for shortcuts, tech, productivity, performance. We curate happiness. We script our lives.
What makes us fully human is the imperfect, ongoing effort to stay present in hard moments, to connect even when it’s uncomfortable, to keep showing up after failure or hurt. Not because we’ll get it right, but because the trying matters. That is where understanding begins. That is where appreciation grows. Being human isn’t about achieving some flawless version of ourselves. It is about making space for mistakes, forgiving ourselves and others, and choosing connection over control. We’re not meant to be perfect. We’re meant to be in relationships, flaws and all.
I hope Max and Hari’s decision to avoid pain rather than move through it might remind us that the “glitches” we have in life aren’t errors in the system, they’re invitations. My hope is that the play invites us to sit with those uncomfortable spaces we’re usually so quick to escape. And to remember that discomfort isn’t something to be fixed or erased. It’s something to be felt and moved through, together.
PC: How do you think the Arts will be impacted (or have already been impacted) by a world that seems to increasingly value manufactured perfection over genuine and authentic engagement with human experiences?
HM: If perfection is the goal, theatre is in trouble because live performance is gloriously unpredictable. Lines get dropped. Props go flying. Emotions bubble up in the wrong places. And that’s exactly why people love it. There’s something magic about being in a room where anything could happen and it usually does. No edits, no filters, no “clean take.” Just real humans, doing something risky in real time. That’s the pull. The mess is the point. As AI starts to take over everything from emails to portraits to playlists, I reckon we’ll be craving the stuff it can’t replicate —presence, connection, and the beautiful chaos of watching someone feel something real in front of you.
Theatre might just become the rebellion. The last place you’re allowed to be unpolished, unpredictable, and fully human, on purpose. That sounds like something worth fighting for.
Instructions for Correct Assembly is performing until 5th July at the Flight Path Theatre in Marrickville.
