To rank Carol Reed's 1949 film adaptation of Graham Greene's The Third Man alongside Red Shift's stage version would be like comparing steak with hamburger.

It's simply unfair to take the performances of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, the stunning (and Oscar winning) cinematography of Robert Krasker and Anton Karas' distinctive zither soundtrack and expect them to translate directly to the theatre.

So, gone are the poetic shots of war-ravaged Vienna and notably absent is Welles' famously improvised Cuckoo Clock speech - this is Greene's script as he originally wrote it and this production is no worse for it.

Taking place in the Austrian capital after the Second World War, a city split into four zones and ruled by black marketeers and corrupt keepers of the peace, pulp novelist Rollo Martins arrives to visit his old school chum Harry Lime, only to find he has been killed in a car accident.

Pounding the streets looking for answers to Lime's death, it soon becomes apparent that murder may have been the case and the truth hinges on the identity of the all-important Third Man.

A story of friendship, corruption, greed and betrayal, The Third Man is the perfect film noir whodunnit and a deliciously dark morality tale.

Taking the essence of the story and adding some ingenious technical tricks (the set is a series of moveable compartments and cameras give skewed clues to the unravelling mystery) and replacing the zither with a part-Fifties spy movie, part-freewheeling jazz score by Ross Brown, Red Shift's version is mostly a success.

While the acting leaves a lot to be desired at times, Anthony Gabriel as Rollo is a little too whiny even for his wimpy character and Justin Webb as the wonderfully nasty Harry Lime is a real disappointment, there is no denying the theatricality of the piece.

Executed with flair and style and keeping the all-important tension in place, this is a fine stab at recreating the very best of Greene's canon.