PLAYING junkie Mark Renton in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting has a buzz to it. Scottish actor Duncan Marwick was pent up on Tuesday afternoon in the York Theatre Royal foyer caf. He had done two performances, Friday, Saturday, then Sunday off, Monday off. He was itching to start again that night in The Studio.

"After all the rehearsals, we'd really needed to get it up on its feet last weekend, so I got to Sunday and I was thinking 'There's something missing here', and I've been champing at the bit since then. I'd much rather have done another performance. All I wanted was a good sleep and then another go at it, and I think we were all like that," he says.

Such is the adrenaline rush of performing Welsh's Edinburgh tale of drugs, the dole and self-destruction.

"You're pottering along in rehearsals for three and a half weeks and then suddenly you're there with an audience in The Studio and you realise there are not just four members of the cast any more, there are five, and there's this freaky energy that comes off that," says Duncan.

"Trainspotting is one of those pieces where you talk directly to the audience and you can really sense the audience thinking and emoting things. The other night, behind me I could hear a woman crying, and throughout a show you can hear all this nervous energy.

"On Saturday we had our first fainting in the audience at the first shooting-up scene with a needle."

Leeds-based Duncan and his fellow Scottish cast members Derek McGhie, Jo Freer and Paul Cowie are performing Trainspotting to the physical and mental max. He believes it helps to be Scottish to do so.

"Even though I'm from the West of Scotland and Edinburgh is on the East side, there's a certain psyche about the Scots which you get in Trainspotting, and by using Scottish actors you don't need to translate it: you're already in the zone," he says.

Seven years on from the Danny Boyle film version, he reckons the time is right for the play to rise again. "I think it's a good thing to be doing it now as it's a story that still needs to be told," he says. "All these issues are still floating around and haven't really been fixed, so it's interesting to dredge it up again ten years after the book came out. Now is the time, without all the hype, to give it another viewpoint."

Trainspotting, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until May 31. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:50 Friday, May 16, 2003