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FINER NOBLE GASES Boys. toys and pills moo
Popular culture has a lot to answer for. The younger generations no longer have the drive to do anything except watch MTV (which destroyed rock’n‘roll) or Big Brother (which destroys your soul). This apathetic generation comes under painful scrutiny in Adam Rapp‘s off Broadway show.
Former band members Chase (Paul Sparks) and Staples (Robert Beitzel) are drugged up, mesmerized by the TV and encased in their manky sofa. Lynch (Michael Chernus), mixed-up by drugs decides to kick in the TV set while their fourth flatmate (Ray Rizzo) lies on the ground comatose, surfacing only to pee in the corner. Missing mindless programming, they plot to burgle their downstairs neighbour, Gray (Connor Barrett) who seems ordinary but he too has his own
The five characters are very much the same, each lost in their own world and finding it increasingly difficult to deal with what lies outside the boundaries of their own
UNDER ICE
Don't crack under pressure 000
STRAWBERRIES IN
JANUARY
Breezy comedy .00
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Theatre
TOM CREAN - ANTARCTIC EXPLORER
One man celebrates an unsung hero 0...
consciousness. A balance of comedy with overriding ugliness Finer Noble Gases examines what happens when we become trapped in life, but makes no attempt to offer solutions or words of encouragement. The set (David Korins) perfectly captures the coarseness of the characters’ existence: an artist’s refuge evaporated of art, hinting that the bearded dwellers have degenerated into a barbaric state of nature. Humour quickly turns to despair as Rupp’s tale of waste, isolation and drugs echoes to our generation like Albee or Pinter did to theirs, and it‘s hard not to yell at the characters : onstage to escape their entrapment. Poetic and exuberant. the show feels like being on a trip, and as the band come together in the penultimate : . ' moment with a powerful, hard-driving punk sound, you ' hope the show has just been some drug-induced dream, but it’s doubtlessly witnessing the ‘has been‘ E : :-- " 'v ‘ ' past or ‘what if’ future of an existential youth culture. ' " ' ' (Lindsay Corr) .5] ,t'. ‘1... ' VOCATION OF A WHORE Old habits die hard 00.
for GLASGOW TIEATRE see non—Festival magazine
' THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 81