Guidelines review: When familiarity becomes deeply unsettling

★★★★

Guidelines at New Diorama Theatre is a deeply disquieting debut from Conglomerate, the artistic partnership between writer Pip Williams and director James Nash. Beneath its stripped back two hander form lies an examination of the internet’s hidden depths, and the morbid curiosity that keeps pulling us back in. It is an intense, demanding watch, one that asks the audience to sit with discomfort rather than escape it.

The performers become something chillingly recognisable. They transform into slick, Silicon Valley style speakers, confidently outlining the “guidelines” of a new online space. The delivery is smooth, upbeat, and relentlessly reassuring. The language feels lifted from tech launches and self satisfied business podcasts, all enthusiasm and surface level optimism. Listening to it becomes nauseating, not because of what is being said, but because of how easily it slides past resistance.

The audience laughs at the sharp comedic beats, and for a moment there is relief. The humour briefly releases the tension, allowing us to breathe, before the production pulls us straight back into discomfort. The nausea returns almost immediately, sharper for having been interrupted. The comedy is not there to soften the experience, but to heighten it, reminding us how easily we can be entertained even as unease creeps back in. James Nash’s direction leans hard into this unease, spacing the performers far apart and forcing the audience’s gaze to dart constantly from left to right. There is no visual rest.

Rachel Leah Hosker and Alex McCauley handle these tonal shifts with precision, flirting with charm and approachability just long enough to draw the audience in, before allowing something colder and more detached to surface beneath it.

As Guidelines develops, it moves into darker territory, examining the internet’s fascination with disturbing imagery and early online consumption. Scenes involving two young girls, a frog with eyes in its mouth, and other grotesque ideas tap into a shared memory of encountering things online before we were emotionally equipped to process them. One sequence in particular lingers. The performers play two young women filming TikTok style dances, light hearted and playful on the surface, until every few bars the choreography fractures and they murder one another before snapping back into rhythm. It is deeply uncomfortable to watch, the violence disguised by familiarity and repetition. Guidelines turns familiarity into something deeply unsettling.

The writing is deceptively simple. What appears minimal is layered and quietly accusatory, leaving the audience sitting in silence, aware of how easily they have listened, laughed, and moved on. The production does not ask for reflection so much as force it.

Visually, there are moments where the production does not push as far as it might. The set, a green square of carpet with ropes suspended above, is intentionally sparse. While this invites the imagination to fill in the gaps, the lighting never sharpens the atmosphere as fully as it could. Deeper darkness and stronger contrast would have intensified the unease the production works so hard to create. A small number of ideas also feel less fully integrated, including an image involving nineteenth century women digging up a MacBook, which briefly tips into the farcical and disrupts the otherwise tight emotional logic of the piece.

This will reward audiences who are willing to lean into unease, and who are interested less in answers than in the uncomfortable questions the internet leaves behind.

Despite these reservations, Guidelines is a strong and thoughtful debut. It is uncomfortable in a way that feels deliberate and necessary, leaving behind a faint sense of nausea that lingers long after the performance ends. It prompted reflection on early internet use and the things that once felt normal simply because no one told us otherwise.

Conglomerate have announced themselves with confidence. This is theatre that lingers, irritates, and quietly implicates its audience.

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Guidelines

New Diorama Theatre

Runs until 14 February 2026

Tickets:

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