Finer Noble Gases

In this freakishly funny and vividly imagined absurdist nightmare for our time, the inert occupants of an East Village apartment - members of a band once called "Lester's Surprise," now remembered simply as "Less" - are going numb. Pill-popping Chase and Staples, who look like they've been living on their sofa since the previous spring, sit mesmerized in front of the television until its untimely demise. Desperately in need of technological stimulus, they decide to call up their weird neighbor, luring him upstairs and under Chase's narrative spell so that Staples can steal his Magnavox via the fire escape. The strange arrivals and events that follow move from the hilarious to the disturbingly existential, as Rapp's electronic-age creatures long to feel something, to be part of something, or to be of use. "A television blares in the background. A bloody child is carried into the room. And at least three kinds of bodily fluids are spilled. This can mean only one thing: Adam Rapp is back in town. Mr Rapp has always written with the energy and tastefulness of a punk rock band, so it should come as no surprise that his latest, FINER NOBLE GASES, follows the drugged-out members of an East Village rock group who waste away their days in front of the television, their eyes half-open, looking almost comatose. In 2000 Mr Rapp burst on the scene with NOCTURNE, a highly praised monologue about a piano prodigy living in the shadow of the death of his sister. Since then he has written a handful of grimly poetic plays including FASTER, TRUEBLINKA and STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS - none of which you would probably want to take your grandmother to. The hallmarks of a play by Mr Rapp are slangy, potent dialogue; a dark, often baroque worldview; and a deep wallowing in the gratuitous ... Mr Rapp is aiming for something much more grand and metaphysical than just another mundane tale of arrested development." -Jason Zinoman, The New York Times "Rapp has concocted a smelly brew here, but like all poisons it can be intoxicatingly fun to watch other people imbibe the stuff ..." -Robert Hofler, Variety