Crime and Punishment @ Liverpool Playhouse, 1-19 Oct

Although Dostoevsky's reputation rests on a number of hefty, fiercely inward-looking novels, his work attracts more theatrical adaptations than you might expect. But then, as Virginia Woolf wrote, his books, far from being tiresome, long-winded tomes, are more like 'seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in.' Chris Hannan, who's responsible for adapting Dostoevsky's most famous novel for the stage, couldn't agree more.

Crime and Punishment, Hannan tells us, "has got everything. It's a crime thriller meets Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. It's set in the slums but it deals with the big philosophical issues." It's perfect for a stage adaptation, because it's dramatic to the core: "The hero commits a murder so throughout the story there's a hideous suspense. Will he be caught?" It has a definite "thriller element," he says, but ultimately it works so well on the stage because "Dostoevsky creates characters who are engaged in huge emotional crises, and that's meat-and-drink for drama."

Of course, there's a lot more to it than the source text. George Costigan, who has a long relationship with the Liverpool Everyman Playhouse (he was a member of the company back in the 70s), plays wily detective Porfiry, and Adam Best (who you might recognise from Holby City, but who's also got solid stage credentials) stars as murderous but endlessly fascinating protagonist Raskolnikov.

The impressive team behind the production, which includes director Dominic Hill (who's also the artistic director of Glasgow's Citizens Theatre), are keen to capture the spirit of the novel in any way they can. "There is a lot of variety in the play," Hannan tells me. "There's music, there's song, there are radio techniques, stunning lighting. The production never settles down into one monotonous style. It's continually looking to tell the story in the freshest way possible.

"All of this," he says, "is a way of bringing out the essential quality of Dostoevsky – he doesn't see anything as fixed, he sees people and character as always in crisis, always at a moment of change. There's a line in the play – 'Everybody wants to change the world. Nobody thinks to change themselves.' The novel and the play are about a person who has to change and change utterly. We take the audience on that journey." [Kristian Doyle]