Iona Firouzabadi
posted 26 August 2006

Lost somewhere amid the piss, vomit and three chord guitar of its own pretension, Finer Noble Gases misses its mark by a mile and its generation by a decade. 

Four Nirvana wannabes vegetate in their New York lounge. Time has stopped and their existence is defined by getting wasted on pink, yellow and blue pills. Their minds and bodies are leaking away from them (a concept visualised by a lengthy on-stage piss). They sit on a couch, bearded and longhaired as cave men, transfixed by the primal light of the TV. But when one of the band puts his foot through the screen, they are galvanised into what approximates action: they must get a new glowing box. 

Out of this develops a terminally slow plot through which we meet the guy downstairs: Gray is a man who borrows his wardrobe from Clark Kent and his demeanour from the 1950s. Dealing in outdated dichotomies of square versus hippy, Wall Street versus Grunge, the production shows that both sides of America are moribund. And that’s it. You wait for something more, but it’s just not there. the American Dream is as hollow and wasted as the lives laid out before us on stage. Well shucks, we’ve never been told that before. 

The doors of perception have remained firmly shut to Adam Rapp’s script. What is unfathomable is that this is a production that has been draped in stars by Edinburgh’s print media. You can’t help feeling that there is a lack of cultural awareness behind this. We are no longer part of the ‘slacker’ generation, but if you want to understand that moment, then watch Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker, which coined the term. Or pick up a copy of that oft quoted but little read book, Generation X. Don’t go and see this play. Simply because a piece of theatre involves rock n roll, American kids and a lot of nothing happening, this doesn’t make it Beckett for Generation X. This is a production that at its best aims for Kurt Cobain but much of the time falls some way short of Kevin Smith’s inane indie film creations, Jay and Silent Bob. 

Finer Noble Gases has been lauded as a eulogy to the dead end of American history, mired in its wasted youth, it is a nation that has lost its collective memory. This is presumably derived from the child-men of the cast bewailing their cracked minds and lost knowledge, referring to Washington and Lincoln and dining out on that multi-purpose American symbol, the Happy Meal. But really, if you are looking for a lyrical lament to the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, read Allan Ginsberg’s seminal poem 'Howl'. If you are looking for a comment on the implosion of innocence and the American dream, read Hunter S Thompson’s acidic novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you want a valediction for a lost generation, watch Gus Van Sant’s haunting film Last Days. If you want to hear the agony and apathy that made Grunge, listen to Nirvana’s Nevermind.   

Finer Noble Gases is a turgid and self-indulgent play that scrambles slowly round the edges of an idea covered with infinitely greater intellect and imagination by others.

Till 28 August 2006.