Coming out of Darren A. Furniss’s Going Down, I was asking myself many questions. Unfortunately, they weren’t to do with the play’s themes of morality and sin; they concerned why this play ever made it out of the Edinburgh Fringe.

The action centres on six individuals sharing a lift. The operator (Sam Clarke) is a strange, uncommunicative man, dressed in a red waistcoat and an untucked shirt. The people in the lift range from an anti-social no-hoper, Christian (Michael James Day) to Dave (Christopher Holt), a boisterous salesman who has been recently promoted.

During the course of the play, they each reveal their secrets to the audience, thus creating an increasingly disturbing and unpleasant series of mini-narratives.

However, the play’s failure is not in its lurid content but its grotty presentation and form. The action clumsily staggers between the monologues of the main six players. Each speech is delivered in a slow, portentous tone. This banality is not helped by the patchy dialogue which frequently sounds like it needs a good proof read; I don’t think some of the syntax and grammar issues are intentional.

It’s frustrating, as the play is not completely brainless. There are moments when the playwright clearly tries to implicate the audience, asking what we’re getting from listening to the increasingly shocking nature of the characters’ confessions. Unfortunately, if laid on too strong, it’s a technique that can backfire and lead to an audience feeling lectured and hectored. Luckily, this doesn’t happen, as it’s only touched on by the writer. Unluckily, this is even more irritating than any potential hectoring; it just feels rushed and lazy.

The glimmers of hope in Going Down are blacked out by some terrible writing. And when delivered by this over earnest cast, the only sin here worth noting is the time and money wasted on this endeavour by all concerned.