There’s been a lot of coverage of Trainspotting’s return to the theatre: just yesterday The Times said it was a bit old hat, while The Independent had declared it “just as shocking” during a preview back in December. Characteristically it was The Scotsman that produced the best writing about the play’s revival, including a lengthy interview with Harry Gibson and analysis of the play’s legacy – plus an excellent foru star review of the play itself by Joyce Macmillan:

There are always questions, around the Trainspotting cult, about whether, by naming so much that is traditionally unnameable, Welsh doesn’t tend, at a visceral level, to validate some of the brutal attitudes, particularly towards women, that he outwardly wants to condemn. But the sheer force of the story and the language tends to overwhelm such objections.

There are moments of tremendous tragic beauty, pity and sorrow in Gibson’s new production, illuminated by a star performance from Peter Milne as Renton. And it’s good to see the capital reclaiming a story that is profoundly about Edinburgh as a symbol of our civilisation; about the dark underbelly and hidden brutality of a festival city that has traditionally seen itself as a beacon of elegance and grandeur, and the home not of darkness, but of enlightenment.