TRAINSPOTTING – OPENING NIGHT

One of literature and the screen’s most shocking stories makes its Sydney stage debut in a powerful new production at the King Street Theatre, Newtown tonight and will run on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights until the 24th May.

TRAINSPOTTING is the story of Mark Renton and his friends in the Edinburgh heroin scene of the eighties. The generation-defining novel by Irvine Welsh won global success as a film adaptation by Danny Boyle starring Ewan McGregor, but was first a highly successful and controversial West End stage production – winning the Sunday Times award for best new play.

Critical praise was universal and it went on to win an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay adaptation – despite controversy in the US as to whether or not it glorified drug use. Senator Bob Dole famously attacked the film’s ‘deparavity’, despite later admitting he had not seen it. The story remains an intense and raw portrayal of the dark side of life that is still very much just a backstreet away from us all.

Blackbox Theatre Company’s Luke Berman (Playmates, Proof, Glengarry Glen Ross) directs Damien Carr (A Glass Menagerie, Everynight Everynight), Taylor Beadle-Williams (Amnesia, Plans, The Crucible), Brendan Taylor (Antony & Cleopatra, Room, As You Like it) and Leigh Scully (Rescue: Special Ops, All Saints, East West 101, Managing Carmen, Brooklyn Boy), in this powerful and confronting play.

“Life’s boring and futile. We start off with high hopes. and then we bottle it. We realise we’re all going to die without finding out the big answers. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life and then we die. We fill our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships, to delude ourselves that it isn’t totally pointless. Smack is an honest drug, because it strips away the delusions. With smack, when you feel good, you feel immortal. When you feel bad – you see the misery of the world as it really is. Real life…”

TRAINSPOTTING
Based on the novel from Irvine Welsh,
adapted by Harry Gibson
Directed by Luke Berman
Produced by Black Box Theatre and Emu Productions
8 to 24 May 2014 Thur-Sat 7.30pm
King Street Theatre, Cnr King & Bray Streets Newtown
Tickets $32 / $27 conc. Bookings http://www.blackboxtheatre.org

Note: frequent coarse language, drug references, simulated sex. Not suitable for children.