Trainspotting: The Musical
Trainspotting: The Musical - The Sunday Times
Musicalspotting
★★★★
Singing heroin addicts? Amazingly, this version
of Irvine Welsh’s junkie classic actually works
Choose life. Choose a book. Choose a film. Choose a soundtrack. Choose a sequel film. Choose a bloody big musical in the West End.
Trainspotting: The Musical? Really? Operas don’t have to be joyous; why should musicals be? Rent is about Aids and West Side Story is about knife crime — but making a song and dance out of Irvine Welsh’s tale of hopelessness and heroin seems a tough ask, for all the black comedy in the original.
There’s not much sunshine on Leith here.
Except it works brilliantly. Welsh, who admits in the programme to being a Lionel Bart fan, has taken the best elements of the original, added some of the prequel Skagboys, then worked with Stephen McGuinness to create new songs that drive the story on, with superb choreography and a fine young cast.
Lewis Kidd is Renton, a smirking, confident wastrel drifting through life and into and out of a crippling drug addiction that eventually kills his amiable but weak-willed friend Tommy (Finlay Paul). Sick Boy, his accomplice in grime and gateway to darkness, is played with charm and swagger by Sheridan Townsley.
Frankie O’Connor gets the big laughs as the psychopathic Begbie, always on the verge of smashing someone’s face in. Kieran Andrew’s gawky, hapless Spud provides masterful physical comedy, especially during a scene when he attends a job interview on speed. Yana Harris makes a likeable Kelly, desperate to escape misery, miserable when she does.
There are a few classic songs — Mad World, Bitter Sweet Symphony, and Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life — plus new numbers such as The Eckies and the Brown, a country-and-western rush of colour, the jaunty Roll with the Punches, and Renton/Sick Boy’s Act I duet.
Ashley J Russell shines as Spud’s mother. Melanie Marshall’s voice enhances the drug-taking scenes as “the Call of Heroin”.
The Act I finale — Sick Boy and Alison having heroin pumped into their veins while their baby dies unseen — is powerful. Dignan’s howl on discovering the death, as Townsley sings Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, is haunting.
Act II loses its way slightly, nudging the star rating down. Drop Dead Gorgeous is energetic but adds little. Renton’s decision to go clean feels sudden, especially against Tommy’s tragic descent and Alison’s bleak fate.
Yet it works, thanks to how human it is. “Heroin loves misery,” says Renton, “and misery loves company.” And this company clearly loves performing misery.
It may be shite being Scottish but there’s a great musical in it. Choose this.
26 July 2026
Written by: Patrick Kidd
