Perhaps you thought Trainspotting was too coy. Maybe you thought Irvine Welsh’s novel was on the restrained side. Yes, it had scenes of drug-addled bed soiling, mindless assaults and fatal child neglect, but perhaps you wish it had been more visceral.
If that is you, then Trainspotting Live will be right up your street. A hit on the Edinburgh fringe and now on tour, Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s exhilarating production plunges the audience into the world of Leith drug addicts and hardmen with a pulverising force. It is at turns hilarious and stomach-churning – sometimes both at once – much like the book itself on publication in 1993.
Harry Gibson’s adaptation places the stories of Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Tommy and Laura (Spud is quietly written out) in the era of acid house. In an extended introductory scene, the bug-eyed actors welcome us into an ear-blasting rave. These are young people out for a good time, full of turbulent energy, squaring up one minute, hugging the next.
The Glasgow run is in the former Arches theatre, now confusingly rechristened Platform despite the arts venue of the same name in nearby Easterhouse. The subterranean vaults create a suitably grungy backdrop as we settle on two long seating banks where we are just as quickly unsettled by the actors making repeated incursions into our space.
Michael Lockerbie’s Sick Boy cosies up to chatter manically. Olivier Sublet’s Begbie eyes one of us up for a fight (me, as it happens). Andrew Barrett’s Renton creates mayhem by cleaning up his filthy body in the midst of the audience. It is a relative relief to have Lauren Downie sitting next to you playing a demure Canadian tourist – although with Begbie in the area, the threat of violence remains.
Along with Greg Esplin’s Tommy, the actors are ferociously good. They work a potentially difficult playing area – a long corridor sandwiched between the audience – with a high-definition swagger. Everything is turned up to 11. That has its disadvantages; you can feel too pummelled to take it all in. But it also gives Welsh’s book the authentic tang of young lives lived on the edge, plummeting from heady hedonism to sorry loss of life.
At Platform, Glasgow, until 16 October and on tour until 12 November.
