'Old habits die hard': Irvine Welsh's Porno comes home

The Herald Scotland

21-07-2025

Having begun its life on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022 five years after Danny Boyle filmed Welsh's book as T2, Carswell's adaptation became a West End hit.
Bringing it all back home for what probably won't be the last time is living testament to the ongoing power of Welsh's ever expanding back catalogue.
The handy translations of Leith patois projected onto the back wall of the stage lest a passing west coaster stumble into the building acts as a cheeky curtain raiser to the uneasy reunion between Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie, the fab four at the heart of Welsh's original story.
Fifteen years after ex junkie Renton did a runner to Amsterdam with the gang's money, he makes a prodigal's return home to tend to his sick mother. This surprise comeback also gives him the chance to hook up with his former drug buddies, and possibly make amends for his betrayal.
With Sick Boy now in charge of a spit and sawdust old school Leith boozer, Spud attempting to write a history of his 'hood before gentrification wipes it out, and Begbie just out of prison, old alliances are rekindled as well as old tensions. The quartet may be older, but probably aren't wiser, as Sick Boy co-opts his pub function room to make amateur porn.
Enter Lizzie, wannabe actress and local copper's daughter who joins the fun before history starts repeating itself as Renton gets itchy feet. This is presented largely through a series of bite-size monologues that get to the inner workings of each character.
In performance this becomes a set of baroque routines that come on like a form of potty-mouthed spoken-word stand-up, with expletive laden punchlines aplenty.
While Chris Gavin's Begbie is a study in hard man machismo, Kevin Murphy as Spud and Jenni Duffy as Lizzie both reveal a fragility hidden by either the effects of drugs in Spud's case or Lizzie's sassy bravado.
When there is conversation, it explores the fragile ties that binds the group. The duologues between Liam Harkins as Renton and James McAnerney
especially see the now middle-aged coulda-been contenders off-loading the baggage of shared history.
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If Harkins' Renton is an everyman figure who hasn't quite cleaned up his act, McAnerney's Sick Boy is a more mercurial figure, always looking
for that ever-elusive money making scheme that will see him make it big. Lizzie's interplay with her dad Knox, played by Tom Carter, is a similar illustration of conflicting loyalties.
Welsh's world is brought to life by Carswell and director Jonty Cameron with a heightened irreverence closer to restoration comedy than gritty realism. This is more than Carry on Trainspotting, mind.
As old habits die hard, it becomes a story about working class aspiration and getting away with whatever you can in order to survive.
The next chapter awaits.