I'VE never been a fan of the American prison movie, having been put off the genre years ago by what I felt was an unnecessary level of gratuitous violence.

So despite The Shawshank Redemption’s cult status, and the fact that my other half consistently rates it as one of the best films of all time, I’ve never got past the first few minutes – though I have seen the ending several times when I've wandered in while it's been running.

I am, however, a huge Stephen King fan, feeling he is one of the most under-rated of popular novelists, able to turn a phrase which sticks in the mind and create a wonderful sense of atmosphere and characterisation.

Both are, sadly, absent from this stage adaptation of his novella, showing at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday.

I wasn’t sure whether it was the swift flow of very short scenes which made the flow of the play jerky and at times awkward, or the raft of rather bad American accents adopted by the cast – the only exception being the prison governor, played here by Owen O'Neill, who co-wrote this adaptation, which has recently been revised for this tour. He was great, being mean, small-minded, petulant, snarling and ultimately defeated.

But the play failed to grip me, the first half especially being very slow. Technical difficulties held up the start of Monday night’s show, and maybe these had more of an effect than we realised. There was an almost total lack of sound effects, which only made a brief appearance in the second half, when the drip of water and an echo added immensely to the atmosphere. The constantly changing set, with dropped panels and at times harsh lighting, also proved confusing.

Maybe the aim was to emphasise the fact that time runs slowly in prison. The action, after all spans the 20 years the characters spend trying to adapt to, and at times beat, the system in Shawshank. If so they succeeded.

I felt Patrick Robinson, a fine actor I have admired in other roles, plays Red without enough gravitas – he simply does not seem enough of an elder statesman, while Ian Kelsey failed to make Andy Dufresne a really likeable character. Then again I didn't find him particularly admirable on the page either, so maybe thats not all his fault).

An interesting evening, but I couldn’t help feeling that Stephen King had it right originally when he decided not to turn this into a full length novel but to keep it as a short story.

Alison Phillips