Seating is in the half round so the audience have good views and Paul Farnsworth’s stage extends in and around the seats, which is used to effect, although it did creak next to me. Trevor Nunn directs. The design is the bombed-out city and everything is grey, except a short dancing scene in the nightclub where the dancers are in red shiny costumes, later they are dressed in black with sequins. 

The story starts with a penniless Holly Martins (Sam Underwood) an American,  coming to Vienna looking for his old friend Harry Lime whom he has not seen since 1939.  As he walks around he is confronted with people, the starving, and the desperate, offering anything they have, including their kidneys just for something to eat. He asks them all “Where is Harry Lime?” No one knows nor cares but eventually he is directed to a building where Harry used to live. 

Talking in English to the porter (Derek Griffiths) who only speaks German who manages to explain that Harry is dead and to be buried that day.  At the graveside he meets a number of strange people, an aristocrat Baron Kurtz (Gary Milner), Anna Schmidt (Natalie Dunne) a nightclub singer who obviously was in love with Harry.  Most sinister of all, are Major Calloway (Edward Baker-Duly) and Sargent Paine (Jonathan Andrew Hulme). These two solders forcefully express their views that they are glad he is dead, with no explanation.