JEZ is a loner; hopelessly drawn into phone sex and one-night stands, he loses the affections and ultimately friendship of his flatmate and turns back to what he knows best - instant self-gratification.
Sounds familiar? Well, yes, and that's not to say it's not good subject matter for a play. Unfortunately, it's been done substantially better than in S/ing Off, the latest offering from Aberdeen's young Confederate Theatre Company. Set in the days after the death of Princess Diana, Jez used the tragedy as an excuse to berate everyone from his shocked friends to the media and to humiliate a succession of girlfriends and his rather more sensitive bosom pal, Stan, who in his own way finds it equally difficult to find a worthwhile life.
As the characters are stereotyped, so are the trimmings - a bedsit world of cosmopolitans, hangovers, mild lesbianism, Sunday drinking, and girlie chat that is the backdrop to a rather aimless amble along the puke-ridden highways and byways of the late twentieth century.
One redeeming feature is Adam Parry's role as Jez. he manages to bring a realistic edginess and sickness to the part but the rest of the cast are one-dimensional and give no real depth to their supposed confusion at just how to find something meaningful.
Other than expose the emptiness of contemporary society, it's difficult to know what S/ing Off is attempting to say, and on this and previous recent outings the company, regrettably, seems rather too fond of low-life explorations of the sexual psyche for its own good.
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