With its sprawling length and huge cast of characters, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 was never going to make an easy transition to the stage.

And so it proved with Northern Stage’s version of Heller’s own dramatisation, which is both way too long but still fails to cover the whole story sufficiently. Characters come and go, storylines are introduced and dropped, but Heller’s distinctive brand of circular logic is firmly adhered to.

The play works best as a short story collection – with highlights being the interrogation of Geoff Arnold’s unfortunate Chaplin, and David Webber’s Doc Daneeka protesting his own existence after the bureaucracy decides he has died on a mission.

At the centre is Philip Arditti’s Captain Yossarian, severely traumatised after a very well portrayed disaster in the air. His love scene with Victoria Bewick’s Luciana is a welcome respite from all the craziness.

But with so little time to introduce his friends, it is hard to see why Clevinger’s death affects him so much after barely a handful of lines together, while his nemesis, the good ol’ boy Aarfy, is almost a throwaway afterthought.

When Michael Hodgson’s Colonel Cathcart strides meaningfully onto the stage, the play takes on a completely different energy – with his manic reading bringing out the true insanity of war.

His energy is something the play lacks in its over-extended final scenes, as Yossarian tries to find a way out of the madness.