A title is a promise. Death of Salesman? There’s a salesman. He dies. Here’s why. And while a metaphor is allowed – note the absence of ectoplasm in Ghosts – the name still frames our responses.

So if Tom Green hadn’t called his play The Death of Margaret Thatcher, its dearth of interesting comment about death, or Margaret Thatcher, might not be such a problem. Then again, nor would this Fringe theatre have attracted headlines such as the Daily Mail’s “Sick play of people spitting on Margaret Thatcher’s grave could end up in West End”.

Well, if you find yourself affected by any issues raised in this show, you need to get out more. Nobody can be shocked at the idea that some people weren’t too taken with Britain’s strongest, and most divisive, leader in living memory. Nor are such morbid imaginings anything new: “When will you die?” crooned Morrissey in his 1988 song Margaret on the Guillotine; “When they finally put you in the ground, I’ll stand on the grave and tramp the dirt down,” growled Elvis Costello the following year.

So let’s get the “controversial” stuff out of the way: a coffin sits in the middle of a stage throughout. A mob of 100,000, we’re told, has joined with a man who walks for days to spit on the late leader’s grave. A vengeful TV news producer suggests that they stick the corpse on a bonfire: “So we can all watch her burn.” This may or may not be your idea of justice. Either way, you can cope with one made-up character expressing it as a sentiment.

Beyond that, the show rarely does what it says on the tin. “I’ve come to see that the play is probably as much about me,” Green says in the programme, “as it is about the woman herself.” Too right. One character sees a shrink to work out his outpouring of grief – but the answer is personal, not political. The producer seduces then humiliates his female reporter. Why? Because he hates women? Because he hated Thatcher? No time to find out, with four storylines to get through in an hour.

Call a show The Death of Margaret Thatcher and you have to offer something heftier than what is happening in the heads of a few thirtysomethings. I found myself imagining the David Hare version, in which a sexy social worker spends two hours arguing Thatcher’s legacy with a dangerously coherent captain of industry. It might be a jawfest. But it would also try to answer the question.

June Abbott’s production hits the odd false note – media parody has to be razor-sharp not to look borrowed – but is played decently by its cast of eight. I’ve seen more confused, less intelligent Fringe shows. But none that failed to deliver so noticeably on such a provocative premise.

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