A successfully satirical study of the results of building a model child
A simple idea turns into a searing indictment of societal norms and moving study of parental grief
Theatre Instructions for Correct Assembly Royal Court Downstairs ★★★★★
Are we entering an age when, thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and other advances, we could order in, and build from scratch, a fully functioning and biddable “model child”, much as if we had bought and assembled some flat-pack furniture?
The scenario for Thomas Eccleshare’s dazzlingly assured, funny and perturbing Royal Court debut could almost have hailed from the Charlie Brooker factory for dystopian satires. Like Black Mirror it looks at what’s around the corner while probing the darker side of our nature: in this case, status-conscious parents’ urge to micromanage their offspring and fatal inability to tolerate youthful frailties.
We first spy middle-aged couple Max and Hari (Jane Horrocks and Mark Bonnar) through a cinematic-futuristic rectangular aperture. They have a laughable, sterile, automated air, a point reinforced (rather too often in Hamish Pirie’s otherwise pitch-perfect production) by movement interludes that have the cast jerking about in a haltingly mechanical fashion. Animating the pair is a “special offer”, which Hari suggests they have a go at “like we did with the upstairs bed”.
Itty-bitty scenes ensue, accompanied by colour shifts in Cai Dyfan’s gradually (and ingeniously) unfolding set and factory buzzer-sounds, sundry items being convey-belted into view. Like some ludicrous Frankenstein’s monster, the body parts of the DIY robot look like they’ve been found in a skip; it’s then just a quick leap of imagination (assisted by the occasional neat trick and illusion) to accept Brian Vernel’s baby-faced Jan as a replica eager-eyed and eligible young man.
The impressionable youth embarks on a learning curve, his head tinkered with, as required, by a screwdriver, his utterances toned down by a remotecontrol device if they risk getting too reactionary, yobbish or just plain self-willed. The audience is also on a mission of understanding, piecing together interwoven scenes in which we see the couple’s real-life son, Nick (Vernel again, equally hypnotic), who left for university, did drugs, proved a disappointment, wound up on the scrap-heap and whom Jan is, insanely, somehow intended to replace.
Eccleshare rivets all the nuts and bolts into place, so that a brilliantly simple idea builds into a searing indictment of societal norms and a moving study of parental grief: Horrocks begins Bubble-wrapped, as air-headed as her Abfab character, but with Bonnar unpacks a profound desolation, trying to hit rewind yet stuck in a repeat-loop of received ideas. Assemble at once to see it. Until May 19. 020 7565 5000; royalcourttheatre.com