There wasn't a spare seat to be had last night. The audience had come from as far as London to witness what had been deemed in theatrical circles a Big Important Event.

It was the world premiere of the new play by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and the John Osborne of his generation. What he writes now will influence others for years to come.

You'll Have Had Your Hole makes Trainspotting seem like The Railway Children. That, however, does not detract from its power both as human drama and social documentary.

In a disused recording studio in a Glasgow the nice people don't see, a bald, AIDS-riddled queen called Jinks and a hardboiled Strathclyder named Docksey have imprisoned and are torturing a fellow lowlife called Dex.

Dex doesn't know why he's been shackled and manacled and nor do we at first. But these are the lengths to which people will go in pursuit of chemical substances, and those who abuse them.

In Welsh's netherworld, the most dangerous form of abuse is failing to pay for what you use. Drug barons are not people you cross, least of all in Glasgow.

But even among the amoral, there is morality - and the relationships between the men and the woman two of them share are deeper even than the holes in their arms.

The play runs in Leeds until March 21. But the nasty taste will linger much longer.

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.