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Although we’ve long lived in an age where pretty much anything can and will be turned into a musical, it is nonetheless mildly surprising to hear that Irvine Welsh’s classic ‘90s novel Trainspotting is being turned into a musical.
Lest we forget, the extremely adults-only book follows the adventures of a gang of Scottish misfits on the fringes of society and features copious amounts of heroin use, gratuitous violence, underage sex and extremely dense Scottish accents.
It was, of course, famously adapted into a hit 1996 film that made a star of Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle, and did make copious use of music, albeit in a ‘soundtrack’ rather than ‘the cast is singing’ way. A cult stage version has also enjoyed long term albeit fringey success, often at the Edinburgh Fringe.
A big (well, medium) budget musical, though? It’s clearly going to be a challenge, although Trainspotting the Musical is as legit as it comes, being written by Welsh himself, in a version that will expand on the original story of Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie et al via a couple of new characters and a bit of a material from his 2012 prequel Skagboys.
Not only that, but he’s written (some of) the songs, in collaboration with Steve McGuinness, with whom he recently teamed up to make an accompanying album to his 2025 novel Men in Love. Exactly how handy they are with a showtune is TBC. But we’re promised the song list will be further pepped up by covers of songs from the soundtrack: negotiations are still underway for exactly what they can get and some of the tunes (‘Atomic’, ‘Lust for Life’, ‘Born Slippy’, ‘Temptation’, ‘Perfect Day’) feel better suited to a musical than others (Primal Scream’s instrumental dub odyssey title track, for instance).
There’s a definite air of scrappiness to the whole thing, but it’s directed by Caroline Jay Ranger who has done a really very solid job putting Only Fools and Horses and Fawlty Towers on the stage recently – Trainspotting does feel like an edgier proposition, but given they seem to be leaning into the film to a large extent, Ranger does feel like your woman for a peppy screen to stage translation. In the only piece of casting announced, young Scottish actor Robbie Scott (pictured) will play chaotic addict protagonist Renton.
Trainspotting the Musical is booking at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Jul 15-Sep 5.
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