CREATIVE Cow, the company formed in a Devon cowshed, have turned Greene again for their follow-up tour to last year's travels with Travels With My Aunt.

Teaming up with Malvern Theatres and new associate the Buxton Opera House, they are doing the rounds with Graham Greene's subversive farce Our Man In Havana, adapted for the stage by Clive Francis from the 1958 novel that mocks intelligence services, especially MI6, and their willingness to give credence to reports from informants, whatever they send.

A trailer in the form of a James Bond pastiche on Creative Cow's website sets the scene for "a murderously funny story told by four actors and a vacuum cleaner... or two" in Cuba in 1958.

Jim Wormold (affable Charles Davies) is a hapless vacuum cleaner, struggling to make ends meet until he is sucked into the dirty world of espionage and double agents by the mysterious Hawthorne (James Dinsmore, in one of no fewer than nine roles). How can he say no to doing a job or two for MI6 when he needs the cash to pay for the increasingly extravagant lifestyle demands of 16-year-old daughter Milly (Isla Carter, who takes on seven roles in total)?

All he has to do, advises the haughty Hawthorne, is keep lying at all times, much the best policy, and so Wormold duly invents myriad informants, all of whom have a nasty habit of coming to life as he tries to stay one step ahead of the likes of Captain Segura (Michael Onslow, the prize collector of roles, with 13 to his name, topped off by The Queen).

York Press:

James Dinsmore, left, Isla Carter, Charles Davies and Michael Onslow, front, in Creative Cow's Our Man In Havana

Nina Raines's hot Havana set, lit to match the shadowy world by Derek Anderson, is complemented by Simon Whitehorn's Cuban sound design to evoke Greene's milieu, while all the cast shares the narrator's role, although each scene set-up is kept almost as brief as a chapter heading.

The ingredients are right, the performances full of character as much as caricature, but Amanda Knott's show is uneven, gaining, losing and regaining momentum, and what is most needed is not so much a vacuum cleaner as something more draconian in effecting a more permanent change, namely a pair of scissors. Francis's script would benefit from being cut to a more compact two hours: the pace, the humour, the storytelling, all would acquire a crispness to match Hawthorne's creases.

The best scenes – a car journey with Onslow holding torches for headlights; Wormold's drunken game of checkers with whisky miniatures with Captain Seguro – have a heightened sense of danger and purpose. Coincidence or not, they are the closest to Patrick Barlow's groundbreaking stage reinvention of John Buchan's The 39 Steps: the very high benchmark that remains out of reach. Close, but no Cuban cigar.

Our Man In Havana, Creative Cow, at York Theatre Royal, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. A post-show discussion will be held tonight.