Welsh adapts Trainspotting as West End musical
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Irvine Welsh is adapting his own 1993 novel Trainspotting into a West End musical opening 15 July at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, co-writing original songs with Stephen McGuinness after the pair released a soul- and disco-infused companion album to Welsh's 2025 novel Men in Love.
- Welsh said the musical must avoid the trap of being "stage plays with music perfunctorily thrown in or nostalgia pieces with unrelated music," and cited the dark source material of West Side Story, Oliver! and Rent as proof the form can handle it.
- Robbie Scott, 26, will make his West End debut as Renton — a role first played on stage by Ewen Bremner in 1994 and on screen by Ewan McGregor in 1996 — while casting for Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy and Diane is yet to be announced.
- Director Caroline Jay Ranger, whose production of Only Fools and Horses the Musical was the Theatre Royal Haymarket's longest-running show, will direct; Welsh praised her grasp of "drama, movement and, above all, the humour."
- The musical will include selected songs from Danny Boyle's film soundtrack — though rights are still being negotiated — and Welsh admitted it would "feel strange" if it did not feature Iggy Pop's Lust for Life.
- The show will add new characters and draw on Welsh's 2012 prequel Skagboys, which Welsh said lets him approach the source "more dispassionately" given the time that has passed.
Why it matters: Welsh writing the adaptation himself — rather than handing it to a hired librettist — gives the musical direct authorial control rare for West End transfers of cult properties. The choice of Caroline Jay Ranger, whose prior Haymarket production set the venue's longest-running record, and the inclusion of film soundtrack songs (rights pending) signal serious commercial intent. Welsh's insistence on new original numbers rather than a jukebox format positions it as a deliberate piece of musical theatre, not nostalgia cash-in.
