Three decades since Irvine Welsh wrote Trainspotting, Renton and his Edinburgh friends survive in our bloodstream largely due to an iconic 1996 film, with less successful follow-ups and sequels overseen by Welsh. This theatre version adapts the text of Harry Gibson’s stage version to create an immersive experience, and if that suggests getting splashed in bodily fluids, you’ll be right: this version of Trainspotting doesn’t stop where the film did.

^{Pictures: Geraint Lewis}

Played by Andrew Barrett, Renton is introduced to us waking up in a bed of raw excrement. He shakes the duvet over the audience. As an attention grabber, it works. But the atmosphere is already electric; punters take their places on benches while the cast dance to pumping techno. But this Trainspotting isn’t about clubbing or soft party drugs; it’s about heroin, and Renton being a junkie. With his Mother Superior (Olivier Sublet) dishing out the spoons and syringes, Renton finds little by way of role models in domestic abuser Begbie (also Sublet) or Sick Boy (Michael Lockerbie), and even his interaction with the more staid Tommy (Greg Esplin) ends in stark tragedy. 

Directed by Adam Spreadbury Maher, Esplin and Ben Anderson, Trainspotting Live reclaims the story from Danny Boyle’s Cool Britannia caper; the job interview scene is more about the Scottish old-school system that Spud’s comical rant in that movie. With a Rabelaisian feel for untamed humanity, Trainspotting Live comes over like a live concert, stripped-down and playing the hits. But above all, this production reminds us of its Scottish roots: dirtier, gnarlier and every bit as exhilarating as you might hope.

Trainspotting Live, Platform, Glasgow, until Sunday 16 October; Riverside Studios, London, Tuesday 18 October–Sunday 6 November; MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton, Wednesday 9–Saturday 12 November.