Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns have based their stage version of The Shawshank Redemption not on Frank Darabont’s film but on the Stephen King novella that inspired Darabont.

Yet inescapably it is the popularity of the film that has triggered this adaptation and comparison feels apt.

The key elements of the film’s story remain. This is a play that highlights the brutal nature of prison life. It also depicts the invigorating power of literacy, the capacity of an individual’s hope to inspire those around him and the corrupt devices of authority.

What defines the film is the central relationship between banker Andy Dufresne, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and the world-weary old lag Red, one of the few men inside who acknowledges his own guilt. In the film Red is beautifully played by Morgan Freeman, and The Wire’s Reg E Cathey seems to have been cast here because, like Freeman, he looks craggy and sounds gravelly. Kevin Anderson less obviously recalls the haunted yet twinkly mien of Tim Robbins’s Andy but does convey his tightly coiled emotions.

While Anderson and Cathey give robust performances, their chemistry lacks real spark. Anderson’s manner is often facetious instead of ingenious and Cathey’s gravity gruff rather than wise. There is bright if occasionally raucous work in the supporting roles. Joe Hanley’s coarsely menacing Bogs and Lee Oakes’s scrawnily priapic Ernie are especially likely to stick in the mind.

Peter Sheridan’s direction is neat, maintaining a good sense of pace but the emotional register seems narrow. Typically, a scene in which Andy is buggered by the resident bovver boys proves graphic rather than suggestive. A more delicate approach would have been more powerful.

In addition, while it might seem churlish to say one misses the grimly bleached photography of Roger Deakins, a real problem here is the lack of a suitable visual language. Although at the outset the prison’s vile characteristics are itemised, life inside looks antiseptic and Ferdia Murphy’s set resembles not so much a forbidding, filthy stockade as a giant shopping trolley.

This is a play that features some fine talking, but seems in the end too literal-minded. Although its heart-tugging ending assures a gale of applause, The Shawshank Redemption is decent entertainment, not a masterpiece.
Until 14 February (0844 482 5138).