Finer Noble Gases
by Adam Rapp

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.