The play opens with Johnny Cash’s Chunk of Coal – a subtle, dusty little nod to transformation. By the end of The Fifth Step, whether anything’s been transformed is up for debate, but there’s certainly been heat, pressure, and a fair bit of dark matter squeezed to the surface.
Written by David Ireland – whose previous plays include Cyprus Avenue and Ulster American – this is arguably his most personal work to date. In our recent interview, he confirmed it as “his confession,” and once you’ve seen it, that makes perfect sense.
Jack Lowden plays Luka, a twitchy, furious, emotionally knotted young man who’s newly sober and not entirely sure he wants to be. Martin Freeman is James, the man he’s just asked to sponsor him – calm, dry, understated, but clearly battle-tested by 25 years in the programme. What starts as a slightly awkward AA meet-and-greet becomes something much richer, messier, and more surprising. It’s a two-hander, but don’t mistake that for small – it’s bold, clever, funny, and full of tension.
The play is staged in the round at @sohoplace, and it’s hard to imagine it working any other way. Wherever you’re sitting, one of the two actors is always facing you – and that intimacy matters. You’re never allowed to feel like a passive observer. You’re in the room. And the room – whether it’s a community centre, a back office, a church hall – is never fully defined. We just know these two men keep meeting there, and that each time they do, time has passed. A week. A month. Maybe more. That’s handled beautifully – the lighting, the subtle soundscapes, the movement between scenes all create the feeling of montage without ever needing to explain it.
Lowden is extraordinary – Luka is all motion, even when he’s still. He can’t sit down, can’t let a moment pass without twitching. He talks about not having about never having sex, about a porn addiction so intense that James and the audience are somewhat shocked by the numbers when he says them out loud. But he’s also magnetic, sharp, funny. And Freeman, whose role could easily have felt thankless, is equally brilliant – grounded, dry, deeply human. There’s a moment midway through where he switches from quietly amused sponsor to something more human, more vulnerable, more frayed. It’s gripping stuff.
The writing is painfully sharp. When Luka asks why he can’t hang out in pubs if he has a soft drink, James explains that “You don’t go to a brothel for a kiss”. Conversations spiral from incel ideology to De Niro impressions (Luka does a great Raging Bull), to marriage, masturbation, Jesus, Wilem Dafoe (you’ll see), and consent. It’s hilarious, distressing, familiar, and absolutely original.
At its heart, The Fifth Step is about confession – what we tell each other, what we hold back, and what happens when someone calls your bluff. Both characters have complicated relationships with masculinity, addiction, and rage. Both had abusive fathers, both have twisted ideas of what love and control should look like. One of them has been sober for 25 years. The other has made it a few months. But that doesn’t mean one is wiser than the other – not always.
It’s also, unmistakably, a play about boundaries. Who gets to ask what? Who’s allowed to say what? Who’s meant to be in charge? There are moments where it starts to feel like a father-son dynamic. And then – brilliantly, deliberately – the lines blur. There are power shifts, accusations, withheld truths, and a moment where Freeman loses it in a way that’s as comic as it is unsettling. There’s a very funny recurring misunderstanding about paper cups and God, and a moment late on that invokes the earlier Raging Bull impression in a way that you may or may not see coming.
There’s no interval. They’re on stage the whole time. You’re with them, and they’re with you. It is the fastest 90 minutes ever, as I was entirely gripped from start to end.
I could write a second piece on the themes of religion, consent, and whether dopamine addiction is the real modern epidemic. But this is a play that does what good theatre should: it lets you laugh, squirm, reflect – and then argue about it on the way home.
Oh, and how does it end? Perfection. Simple, a bit silly, and quietly brilliant.
The Fifth Step is at @sohoplace until the 26th July.
Tickets from www.theatreticketsdirect.co.uk
Words by Nick Barr
Photography Johan Persson
