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Trainspotting

Published Wednesday 27 April 2005 at 16:10 by Barbara Lewis

Sordid, explicit, exuberant, devastating - Irvine Welsh’s infamous 1993 novel introduced the uninitiated to the dizzying heights and unbearable depths of life as a ‘trainspotter’. Adapted by Harry Gibson, the play, even more than the book and the film, makes us share the experience of ‘smack’, ‘skag’ - call it what you will - but without the danger.

We can smell it ‘cooking’. We feel the needles pierce the bulging veins and, on one occasion, a naked penis. We recoil in horror at a wave of bodily filth. Like the novel the play is episodic but bound by mantra-like repetition, streetwise music and above all, the characters. Cameron Jack directs, with adrenaline pumping and sentimentality banished. Sounding the part with well-rehearsed harsh Edinburgh accents, the cast of four is compelling and dispels any doubts about the difficulty of overcoming memories of the film version.

If there is a hero it is Renton, played by Kevin Watt, who manages to imply that this particular smackhead is intelligent, sensitive and redeemable. Not so Begbie, played by a menacingly compact Duncan Pow. The most tragic case is Tommy/Sick Boy (Steven Tagg), an innocent bent on self-destruction.

The solitary woman is Rosalind Davidson as Alison and a host of other parts, not necessarily gentler than the male roles. We would be almost as embarrassed to share a train compartment with her as with the psychotic Begbie. That is another advantage of the immediacy of the stage version, it is almost a real life experience but without being quite as threatening.

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