Trainspotting the Musical review – forgettable songs make this a bad trip

The cast during the curtain call on the opening night of Trainspotting the Musical. Photograph: Dave Benett/Alan Chapman/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenThe cast during the curtain call on the opening night of Trainspotting the Musical. Photograph: Dave Benett/Alan Chapman/Getty ImagesReviewTrainspotting the Musical review – forgettable songs make this a bad trip Theatre Royal Haymarket, LondonThe chopped-up story means this ends up feeling like a weak impersonation of Danny Boyle’s classic film“Choose life …”

Those iconic words from that era-defining film are said more than once in this musical take on Irvine Welsh’s novel about Renton and his renegade gang of smackheads from Leith.“Choose being in the moment,” says the disembodied voice that asks us to switch off our mobile phones before the show has begun (with, one imagines, a self-satisfied glint at the joke). “Choose life,” repeats Renton (Lewis Kidd), trying so hard, it seems, to capture the dangerous energy of that moment in the 1990s when Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and co depicted heroin addiction as a protest against the grunting conventions of ordinary life.

Sadly, the drug-addled escapades and illegal highs here look about as dangerous as a double-dose of Gaviscon.Written by Welsh and directed by Caroline Jay Ranger, the story appears chopped up so that one scene is disconnected to the next, the story bitty, the well-known scenes and lines rattled off as if from a Trainspotting-branded assembly line, albeit in a different order: first the group trip to Blackpool for a northern soul gig, then the various set-pieces, from the speed-fuelled job interview by Spud (Kieran Andrew) to the snooker-table violence from Begbie (Frankie O’Connor) and Renton’s toilet high – the latter made more vivid with the use of back screens (video design by Douglas O’Connell).There are some touching moments with the death of Alison’s (Rosie Dignan) baby and the decline of the most well-adjusted of the group, Tommy (Finlay Paul), until he discovers heroin, but these are not nearly as devastating as they should be, and are briskly enacted.

None of it is half as shocking, entertaining or as poignant as the film. Nor is the imagination as sparkling when it goes its own way, such as a moment in which Spud’s mother rails against social ills (from prescription drugs to sugar and additives).The advertising declares the return of these characters, 30 years on from Danny Boyle’s film, but that’s not quite true because this train has been chugging on ever since the publication of Welsh’s novel in 1993, which has spawned a prequel, three sequels, a stage play, and a second film (T2 Trainspotting).

It could be Trainspotting Inc, never ending in its mutant life forms.The leads are mutants of sorts here, visibly styled on the film actors, albeit cardboard flat: Renton with shaved head and jeans but without the dark charisma of McGregor. It is hardly Kidd’s fault – characterisation doesn’t allow nuance or individuality.

Sick Boy, cocksure, with dyed blond hair; Spud a twitching dork and Begbie a pub psychopath with a moustache.In its music and songs, the cover numbers bring the few high points. There is Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life, so synonymous with the film that you can still picture McGregor’s sprint along the streets of Edinburgh, and renditions of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

But, much like the musical itself, they do nothing more than imitate a far better original, already out there.Alongside the covers are songs written by Stephen McGuinness and Welsh which are forgettable at best, or best forgotten in the case of one with a country and western twang and another which sounds alarmingly like a riff on The Proclaimers.It’s strange to see these characters singing as they shoot up, or rage against the machine.

“Would Renton really choose to return to this life,” you find yourself wondering. It all seems so tame and commercial for this bunch of anti-capitalists. A bad trip indeed.

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