The Guardian view on new musicals: sex, drugs and song ‘n’ dance | Editorial

Adaptations of hit novels like One Day and Trainspotting help keep the genre in tune with the times Singin’ in the Rain it will never be, but Trainspotting the Musical is not as improbable as it seems. The yellow-brick road from cult novel to film to blockbuster musical is so well trodden that it was only a matter of time before an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s gritty 1993 novel about a bunch of heroin addicts in Edinburgh hit London’s West End. Danny Boyle’s 1996 film , which celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, had already established Trainspotting as a story with a soundtrack. The musical will have specially written songs too. From Oliver! and Les Misérables to Matilda, Wicked and The Devil Wears Prada, many of the biggest hitters in the West End today started out as books. Even the global hit Hamilton was inspired by a hefty 800-page biography of the 18th-century American founding father Alexander Hamilton . Last autumn, Paddington the Musical joined their ranks. A musical version of another hit novel about the 1990s (although published in 2009) – David Nicholls’s One Day – opened in Edinburgh this month. The romance between Emma and Dexter might be more typical musical fare than the drug-fuelled antics of Trainspotting’s Renton, Sick Boy and Spud, but that doesn’t mean that the latter don’t belong in a musical. Welsh has revealed that this latest incarnation will “broaden” to include contemporary addictions to mobile phones and the internet. Continue reading...

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