Trainspotting

A warning: if you’re funny about bodily fluids, nudity and don’t like being jostled, you might want to skip this frantic adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s era-defining anthem of a novel about a bunch of lads living for the next high in a smacked-out Edinburgh. Faked faecal matter gets thrown around with gleeful abandon.

In Your Face Theatre’s immersive staging of Welsh’s tale reaches The Vaults below Waterloo station after two stints at the Edinburgh Fringe and in the twentieth anniversary year of the Danny Boyle-directed, Ewan McGregor-starring film version, shortly before ‘T2: Trainspotting’ hits cinemas.

In appropriately rave-y surroundings, director Adam Spreadbury-Maher flings his glo-stick-waving cast at us with blunt force. They clamber over us and thrust their crotches in our faces, as they spit, shit, puke and shoot up. Harry Gibson’s often filthily funny adaptation loops itself well through the breathless, knotted rhythms of dialect-inflected prose.

Lurking under the surface here is stuff about youth, unemployment and the emptiness of modern life – which Renton (Gavin Ross), in that zeitgeist-y opening monologue, refuses to choose – that still feels relevant. But this production really thrives on the noise it generates, powered by the adrenalin hit of its middle-finger-thrusting, in-yer-face-ness.

It tears through the novel’s winding Edinburgh backstreets and storylines as though racing itself to a finish line, while careening unsteadily between slapstick violence and darker themes. Initially exhilarating, this becomes dulling after a while, as the show shouts itself hoarse to keep the buzz going.

'Trainspotting' is back in 2017. This review is from Nov 2016.