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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mark Fisher

Trainspotting Live review – ferocious drama plunges you into world of Irvine Welsh

Everything is turned up to 11 … Greg Esplin and Andrew Barrett in Trainspotting Live.
Everything is turned up to 11 … Greg Esplin and Andrew Barrett in Trainspotting Live. Photograph: Geraint Lewis

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.

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