A new piece of theatre that premiered in Melbourne in August 2013. A revival is currently planned in Edinburgh for January 2014.
Rob and Roberta are housemates and best friends, though everyone admits that the friendship is slightly… uneven. Rob is sardonic, mean and callous, while Roberta remains patient, kind and overly eager to please just about everyone; Rob has recently been through a bad break-up with a ‘perfect’ woman named Rachel – but what exactly drove them apart? Plain old romantic differences, or something much, much darker?
Meanwhile, two friends of Roberta, Cheeto and Flyby (sometimes known as Rida), are desperate to tell one another that they love each other: in actual fact, they have both told each other several times, but they always forget due to “intoxication”.
Rob and Roberta contains the following tropes:
- Ambiguous Ending: Does Rob's plan to cure himself work? We never find out.
- Beta Couple: Flyby and Cheeto who end up together, unlike Rob and Rachel.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Nearly all of Rob's line are putting down another character or just generally ignoring social rules. it's later revealed it's actually comedic psychopathy, but close enough.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Flyby/Rida hates being called such. Later on, he calls his friends out on it.
- Foregone Conclusion: We see Cheeto and Flyby just after they get married before we actually see them properly get together.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Cheeto claims his real name is 'Chastity'. This is not the case.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Cheeto says that his mother naming him 'Cheeto' is proof that she doesn't love him.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed; Rachel obviously likes to think of herself as this, and sets out to 'fix' Rob. At any cost.
- The Stoner: Cheeto and Flyby keep confessing their love for each other, and then forgetting because of their marijuana habit.
- The Dog Bites Back: Flyby is the only one in the play to call Rob out on his treatment of others, in the penultimate scene.
- Unreliable Narrator: Rob tells a horrifying and entirely untrue monologue about how his grandfather died.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Cheeto has some serious issues; one of the ways this manifests is a rejection of traditional clothing standards.
