Trainspotting Live CREDIT Geraint Lewis

The Guardian 12 October 2022

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. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).