'Trainspotting the Musical' review — Irvine Welsh brings his iconic 90s work to the stage

Read our review of Trainspotting the Musical, starring Lewis Kidd, now in performances at the Theatre Royal Haymarket to 5 September.

Summary

• Trainspotting the Musical premieres at the Theatre Royal Haymarket
• Irvine Welsh adapts his own novel for stage
• The show features both new songs and classics like Lust for Life
• Kieran Andrew and Rosie Dignan particularly impress as Spud and Alison respectively

It's hard to overstate the impact the film version of Trainspotting made when it first appeared 30 years ago. It was a standout zeitgeist moment in a decade brimming with them, it launched Ewan McGregor, it turned a toilet into a meme, I even studied it at university.

But despite such lofty cultural status, Irvine Welsh's searing examination of heroin addiction and post-industrial ennui seems an odd choice as the source material for a musical. Welsh bases his own adaptation on both the original 1993 novel and its 2012 prequel Skagboys, and has co-written new songs with Stephen McGuinness, which sit alongside familiar classics including "Bitter Sweet Symphony", "Mad World", and "Perfect Day".

So what results is a kind of hybrid jukebox show, one that at points almost feels like a 90s nostalgia fest, but makes an awkward vehicle for a bleak story of broken characters seeking highs against a backdrop of urban decline. They include Renton (Lewis Kidd), Sick Boy (Sheridan Townsley), Spud (Kieran Andrew), Tommy (Finlay Paul), and Begbie (Frankie O'Connor), all friends who in a previous generation would have been working the Leith docks but are now rudderless in every sense.

The film's most famous moment - besides the toilet - is its opening 'Choose life' monologue, and here it's delivered with the twist that afterwards Renton launches into the Iggy Pop song "Lust for Life" that underscores it. Later, after shooting up, he sings a country and western ditty, "Cunts from the Country", replete with a line-dancing routine from the company. Shortly after Spud soils his sheets he's singing a jaunty number that rhymes "munchies" with "rolling with the punches". Tonally it's difficult to pin down; rarely have drugs and rock 'n' roll seemed such strange bedfellows.

Caroline Jay Ranger, who previously directed the musical version of Only Fools and Horses at this address, certainly has form shepherding well-known IPs to the stage. But here she struggles to create much narrative arc, given the unrelentingly grim nature of it (there are long sections of drug-taking with little in the way of plot development), though the storyline involving Renton's brother, a soldier serving in Northern Ireland, does bring some catharsis with his parents (Rebecca McKinnis and Gordon Cooper), as does the subplot of Renton's girlfriend Kelly (Yana Harris) heading to London only to discover the bright lights are disappointingly dim.

The three-sided bar design by Colin Richmond feels more boxy than expansive, though does facilitate some video projections by Douglas O'Connell that illustrate certain key moments including the infamous toilet swim, in which Renton attempts to reclaim his lost suppositories. Three musicians and singer Melanie Marshall (billed as The Call of Heroin) are sadly kept largely out of sight in a side room.

There are enjoyable snatches - that aforementioned line dance does get the toes tapping – and there are some impressive performances, notably from Andrew's jerky, knock-kneed Spud, and Rosie Dignan as the ill-fated Alison, whose baby dies while she's getting high. But it's difficult to really get an emotional grip on the characters, and while one can admire Welsh's sheer chutzpah in undertaking it, in the end it's an unhappy marriage of form and story.

Trainspotting the Musical is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket to 5 September. Book Trainspotting the Musical tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Trainspotting the Musical (Photos by Matt Crockett)