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Jello Biafra

Steve, Owen Frost, and Jane, Elise Verney, meet in a pub quite by chance. Steve and Jane are as chalk and cheese as it gets. Whereas Jane is a carefree spirit who enjoys the random opportunities that life offers, perhaps too much, Steve is straight-laced, careful, and afraid to let his guard down and explore himself and his life. They’ve both reached an age now where their focus is on settling down, possibly starting a family and a life together, but the closer they get, the more Jane seems to pull away. And somehow, as truths are shared and experiences explored, Steve and Jane, to the most part, make it work. But as fate steps in and deals the couple a challenging hand pushing them further apart, with Steve, at least, trying to hold out that they will make it.

A play about relationships is as original as a theatre company staging Shakespeare, Pinter, or Becket, trying to convince their audiences that what they are doing is different. Personally, nothing can be more unoriginal than a two-header where the audience is pulled into the drama of the couple on stage. Reading this back, it seems a little harsh, but we all have too much drama in their lives already; why come to the theatre to be pulled into someone else’s drama, even if it is fiction? That said, writer/director Lucy Linger’s debut feature play, Off Roading, is a powerfully observed and intently beautiful comedy-drama about two people who really need one another, even if they don’t truly understand why.

One of the strongest messages audiences are likely to take away from OffRoading is a simple one: that love can be right in front of us, but our natural inner self-destructive nature can overwhelm the experience. Linger quite bravely has Steve serve as the narrator of the piece, and in doing so greatly exposes his flaws. Steve doesn’t only put a great deal of pressure on Jane; he never takes into consideration some of the external factors, such as his job and living situation pre-Jane, that add to this pressure he’s under. But for me the biggest challenge Steve is facing is trying to replicate the relationship of his parents; this is what we all want, and for Steve, he wants the romance of his parents, who are still very much in love. This is what he hopes he can create with Jane, and to that end, he tries too hard to force this, even if Jane seems to passively allow it.

There is a growing comfort brewing between Steve and Jane, and Linger is never shy about allowing Steve to be brutally honest as he explains how his relationship started to get deeper, and yet he’s never able to truthfully express what Jane meant to him. He almost forces himself into her life whilst not truly appreciating the life that Jane had and wanted to live. 

Jane is strong and prefers her freedom to being stationary. As Jane begins to open up to Steve, albeit after a lot of goading by Steve, we begin to see the reasons why Jane is the way she is. Besides what Jane tells Steve about her family life, it’s not hard to appreciate the many happy memories Jane has created through travelling. Travelling becomes a way of helping her to keep some of these memories alive. Jane does love Steve, but it is the type of love that’s hard for her to quantify because to her, the forever love that Steve is looking for has a different meaning to her.

We see through Steve’s monologues to the audience that has to live in this strange repetitive memory. The guilt he feels for his actions, the words he chose, and his stubbornness. This honesty about what he said and did in the relationship is brilliantly written, and Frost excels in delivering this pressure Steve puts himself under that leads to his greater feelings of fear and anxiety. He all but admits to not understanding Jane’s predicament and tries hard to mould her into the type of girlfriend he wants her to be. This selfishness does seem to impact Jane, who’s actions toward Steve’s slightly overbearing nature could be seen as equally selfish but are more a rebellion of Steve’s overbearing nature. But because Linger has the audience experience everything through Steve’s memory, we get to appreciate the mistakes he knows he made and the regret that he now has to live with.

There is an honest urgency in how Front brings Steve to light—something of a revelation with the actor truly understanding Steve and allowing him to confront his memory in such a profound and, at times, incredibly vulnerable way. I won’t say that Steve is the “bad guy” of the piece, but he could have handled himself and the situation differently. As Steve’s story unfolds, Frost never tries to paint his character as anything other than a man who is desperately in need of being loved but equally as a man who doesn't know how to cope when the love, even if unconventional, is presented to him.

From the moment Jane meets Steve, there is a dull spark between them; they understand one another, but there are more than a few question marks. The confidence that Verney gives Jane is matched by this impeccable aura that surrounds both character and actor. As she speaks to Steve for the first time, there is a humour that is soft, dark, and playful, which almost knocks Steve for six. And much like Frost, Verney has managed to find the soul of her character within Linger’s text, which has allowed her to give such honesty to Jane’s story. This confidence that Verney gives Jane fails to mask Jane’s desire for a connection, perhaps even a need for her to find someone who challenges her worldview and offers her an alternative path. In Steve, she finds a man who, even though he’s still finding himself and his place in the world, is completely different from the men she’s met. There is something in Steve that I would suspect is reminiscent of her father, and it’s that that draws her closer to him.

"With the simplest of props, Verney and Frost come in and out of the flashback with an ease that is incredible to watch."

Linger is an insightful playwright who has crafted a very deeply touching, heartfelt, and engaging debut feature play. OffRoading verges on being faultless in how it has both been written, directed, and acted, with Linger being able to build a solid foundation between herself and her actors that has meant they have been able to connect with the emotional sensitivities of their respective characters. This was best seen in Act 2, as tone and narrative take a drastic turn. Interestingly, though Steve retains his blinkered view of their relationship, which adds to the dramatic tone, Verney takes Jane on a 180. Verney comes into Act 2 with a heavier burden for Jane that also serves as a curveball to the relationship with Steve. There is something unbelievably skilful in how Verney and Front breathe life into their characters in these final scenes. 

Of all the scenes that best encapsulate this is the flashback story Steve tells. With the simplest of props, Verney and Frost come in and out of the flashback with an ease that is incredible to watch. In film and TV this scene is easy to do; camera angles, lighting, props, etc. give the actor a lot of leeway, but here Verney and Frost have nothing but some chairs, and yet one is fully invested in the flashback, in how Verney goes from past to present, which is exceptional. 

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There is a lot to contend within this play, which has a lot of moving parts and, for Jane at least, a lot of costume changes. Linger could have tried to be a little simpler in her approach to directing OffRoading—less costume changes, less coming and going—but that simplicity wouldn’t have aided her text. Everything comes together in a way that serves Linger’s writing, which is inspired by the playwright's own personal experience of breast cancer. OffRoading is an wonderfully insightful piece of theatre, with the final result being a play that is so finely layered that it will give you something different each time you see it.