About the Show
New musical by Irvine Welsh and Stephen McGuinness. Directed by Caroline Jay Ranger.
Read more Show lessCritic Reviews (8)
"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."
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"It's leaden and formulaic where the book was coruscatingly fragmentary, sermonising and expository where Danny Boyle's 1996 film was darkly, hedonistically propulsive."
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"Sadly, the drug-addled escapades and illegal highs here look about as dangerous as a double-dose of Gaviscon."
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"The cast awkwardly shuffle around him through a rendition of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”, like mourners, corralled into a karaoke session at a funeral."
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"It’s as if the story has been castrated, all its cynical, tough, jagged wit, all its fuck-you attitude lopped off."
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"Ultimately, it's the ineptitude rather than the tricky subject matter that sinks Trainspotting The Musical."
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"It is downright odd to see such cynical no-hopers as Renton (Lewis Kidd) and Sick Boy (Sheridan Townsley) going all jazz hands, and it undermines the power of Welsh’s characterisation."
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"You can't help lamenting the absence of the original movie soundtrack. The newly-written songs are no match for New Order, Primal Scream, Pulp or Blur"
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