There’s trouble in the air at Cockaigne High School. It’s almost time for the student society’s big annual shindig, but the VP’s booked the wrong band – and the one he’s landed them with is so last year. The school newspaper’s journalists are circling, the president is AWOL, and there are mutterings that the whole thing might be cancelled. Oh, and a serial killer’s on the loose too.

There’s the makings of a great concept at the core of this script. The committee of the eponymous Drinking Society are the parodic epitome of student politics: think self-aggrandizing titles, factional battles, and endless disputes over procedural rules. They’re so absorbed by their own in-fighting that they don’t spot a murderer literally in their midst, hiding ineffectively behind increasingly unsuitable items of furniture.

The scene is set for farce, and a few set-piece scenes do work well. The killer’s incompetent attempts to kidnap the president see her scooting round comically on an office chair, while the overblown final showdown is well-conceived, drawing together threads woven throughout the play. There are frequent callbacks to earlier lines, several scenes take genuinely unexpected turns, and we hear entertaining references to scandals which happened before the script began.

But the pace isn’t sharp enough to sustain the style of humour, and – on the day I attended – delivery of the lines was sometimes a problem too. The serial killer’s manifesto touches on political satire, but the implied themes of privilege and aspiration feel bolted-on, rather than relating back to the student committee’s squabbles. And why is there a drinking society at a high school? Are the drinkers under-age? Is that part of the satire too?

I personally felt that one scene, where a character is taken hostage with a bag over her head, was rather more troubling than they’d intended. And perhaps there’s a theme there: other, lighter motifs, such as the recurring discussion of a Tesco meal deal, also don’t come across with the humour that must have been planned. Overall, I think this show needs more time to tighten and heighten its delivery, and to calibrate which of its many intentional absurdities are truly funny on stage. I’d drink to that.