BEN ELTON cares passionately about the environment. And into his

brilliantly comic tyrade against corporate greed and cynical consumerism

comes a sudden simple speech from one Seattle, an American Indian chief

in 1854: ''Every part of the earth is sacred to my people . . . we know

that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is

the same to him as the next one . . . he comes in the night and takes

from the land whatever he needs.''

It brings proceedings to a juddering halt. And there's the shame of

it.

Because, for two thirds of the evening, Elton demolishes the corporate

world with a show of truly outrageous and inventive hilarity.

Not since Doug Lucie's Fashion has there been such a sustained assault

upon marketing and modern business with its fatuous corporate-speak.

Well, we're talking ''serious,'' Serious Air here, for Elton hits on

the ultimate ignominy in privatisation mania -- buying up air.

Part sci-fi, part extended TV sketch, Elton's nontheless impassioned

vision will keep you in stitches -- albeit some of his jokes, for my

taste, border perilously on the sexist -- up to the final third when, as

the message darkens, Elton's inexperience as a dramatist simply

self-destructs its own form. Good intentions, shame about the play?

Well, for all its faults, Gasping is still a bracing evening with the

added bonus of an achingly funny performance from Hugh Laurie as the

corporate acolyte to Bernard Hill's jovially unscrupulous tycoon whose

obsession with finding the ''pot noodle'' (making a pound where none

existed before) sets the whole operation in motion. Kick the medium, if

you must -- but don't kick the message. It's too important.