IAN Brown's gut-wrenching production of life down among Edinburgh's

young drug addicts has finally hit London and if the Bush Theatre's

audience is anything to go by, has already found its natural home.

Forget the difference between tough Edinburgh vernacular and the south,

forget the difference between lifestyles.

The under-thirtysomethings in this audience knew exactly, even shared

(if that's not too emotive a word in the circumstances) the world author

Irvine Welsh and Ewan Bremner's quasi-narrator Mark are coming from.

They loved the insipient anarchy of it, they groaned with the desperate

degradation of it, and they thrilled to the dramatic energy of it.

Bremner as the ''drying-out'' junkie Mark is again outstanding. This

actor has a way of conveying vulnerability, nervous energy, and

rebellion all in the flick of those elongated fingers. But James

Cunningham's ravaged Tommy, Susan Vidler as Alison, and Malcolm

Shields's terrifying portrait of bully boy and mafioso, Franco, equally

make the blood run cold.

Audiences may find the temporary entertainment in the ribaldry adaptor

Harry Gibson, Brown and the cast have managed to draw out of this story

of hopelessness and human waste. But there's no mistaking the lessons --

death by a hundred cuts -- and the rage beneath. If I have a criticism,

it is that the humour in a sense, lets us, the audience, off the hook.

Mark's rehabilitation and recovery from such abuse, too, seems

remarkably speedy. But those quibbles apart, it remains a theatrical

stunner -- a harrowing testament to a generation. Trainspotting should

be required viewing in every London borough and throughout the land, one

of the most important plays the Bush has ever presented.