The Fifth Step review — Jack Lowden is staggeringly good

Times

20-05-2025

Less is definitely more. When I saw this David Ireland two-hander at the Edinburgh International Festival last summer, I couldn't help feeling that Ireland, a writer who loves shock tactics — think how Ulster American, which was revived in London not so long ago with Woody Harrelson, ends in a bloodbath — had thrown in too many extraneous elements. The revised version at London's Sohoplace is leaner and all the more compelling.
It certainly helps that the director, Finn den Hertog, an associate artist at the National Theatre of Scotland, gets such intense performances out of the Slow Horses star Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman (replacing Sean Gilder, who was equally impressive in Edinburgh). Lowden is staggeringly good as a young loner, Luka, all jitters and tics and swear words, who is trying to pull himself out of an alcoholic spiral. Freeman impresses too as James, the adviser who is trying to help his protégé through the 12-step programme to sobriety.
What emerges is no conventional tale of overcoming adversity but a morally ambiguous account of shifting power dynamics. When the two men begin their casual conversations, armed with cups of coffee, it seems that James is firmly fixed in the role of the rational older protector who fought his own demons long ago. We get the impression that Luka, who longs to have a woman in his life, could well be swapping booze for a kind of religious mania.
In his programme notes, Ireland explains that he went to Alcoholics Anonymous in his twenties. And after years of considering himself an atheist, he had a religious reawakening during lockdown. It's fitting that the play opens with a spartan recording of a heart-on-sleeve ballad by Johnny Cash, an artist who had his own battles with faith.
Lowden presents us with a man whose mind is running at speed but going nowhere, like a car stuck in neutral. Freeman takes on the challenge of digging into an apparently unflappable character who only slowly reveals his inner thoughts.
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By the end, we're much less sure that James has the upper hand. Luka confronts his sense of shame, sometimes in comically brutish language (his definition of marriage is having 'pussy on tap'). What we see of James's inner life begins to seem less serene than we first thought. Ireland conveys all this through memorably jagged exchanges bathed in redeeming black humour.
The Edinburgh production featured an elaborate revolving set. Things are much simpler at the in-the-round Sohoplace: the two actors roam a space littered with only a handful of chairs and a small table. Ireland has also jettisoned a climactic scene in which James ends up in hospital. The result is simpler yet freighted with a greater sense of unease. Things are left unsaid, and that, paradoxically, gives us more to ponder.★★★★☆90minTo Jul 26, sohoplace.org
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