Machine of Death is based on an intriguing premise: a society in which everyone can know how they will die. The Machine is a mechanical device which, provided with a blood sample, prints the subject's death sentence on a square of dramatically crimson paper. The readings can be enigmatic and cryptic, but never wrong.

The play is an adaptation by Lawrence Bowles of a collection of short science fiction stories commissioned by magazine editors Ryan North, Matthew Bernardo and David Malki in 2007. The submissions they received from readers worldwide form a collection of revealingly titled tales such as 'Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions', 'Aneurysm' and 'Radiation'. Bowles' play is a series of sketches dramatizing some of these fates.

In an office common room, the Machine of Death offers one up on traditional 'getting to know you' games. Rather than breaking the ice with Truth or Dare or 'Never have I ever', the icily enthusiastic Norma (Ami Jones) insists that her fellow employees try her new party game: match the death to the guest. After the initial exposition of her party game, the scene loses momentum, with repetitive cycles of voting for deaths and awkwardly stilted dialogue.

A recurring problem is that developing a scene is difficult after the punch line has been delivered at the opening. One perplexing scene didn't even deliver on its promise of 'Suicide and Murder, Respectively', an encouraging title intoned by an emotionless disembodied voice. The scene lapses into an unconvincing conversation between one excitable scientist and one unexplainedly angry one in which they plot how to win the lottery by sending dead rats' death predictions back in time via the machine. The triumphant-mad-scientists culmination felt tired and left the audience bemused.

Two scenes did manage successful twists on the Machine's delivered statements, cleverly inserting clarifying information at the end of the scene which modified the preceding drama. The revelation that a car accident that seemingly occurs too soon was a coy trick of the Machine's, which had described the age not of the victim (Daisy Scholten) but of the vehicle, was effective, and another age-related misconception ends the story of the Prime Minister's (Eric Hambro's) election campaign on a high.

These moments of surprise were unfortunately rare, with scenes drawn out further than their conceits could support. The best moments were the one-liners delivered at intervals throughout the play in which a character would approach the machine, read its perturbing verdict, ponder it, and exit. Chloe Mashiter and Charlie Bindels delivered their fates with particular composure.

There are some interesting concepts opened up by a death-predicting machine which the play only hints at. The havoc wreaked by clients' foreknowledge of death at a life insurance company, and the newfound fatalism of death-aware voters, were intriguing but underdeveloped backgrounds to sketches. The stories were on the whole unable to offer more than an example of the quickly-tiring phenomenon of the play's title, and the actors were not helped by a sometimes clunky script.