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The Fifth Step starring Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden (@sohoplace, West End) ★★★★ REVIEW
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Mickey Jo
Do you know, sometimes there is nothing more exciting to me than going to see a piece of theatre I know nothing about. Literally nothing. I had no idea what this play was, only that everyone around me seemed to be incredibly excited about it and I was very curious to find out why. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media as well as a content creator and today I'm going to be letting you know exactly what I thought of the new play in the West End, the Fifth Step. I saw the opening night performance last week. It's currently playing at the West End's newest theatre at Soho Place, having previously been seen, I believe, at the Edinburgh Festival. It is co produced and commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland and co stars Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden in a gripping perhaps 80 minute two hander that it materialized was about recovery from alcoholism, in particular the relationship between a young recovering alcoholic and their more experienced sponsor. Those are the characters portrayed by these two men, but the places that the play takes us to, the conversations that it has, are a little more unexpected and we're going to talk through them today as well as their performances, the staging, every other aspect of this production. Now I'll be letting you know what I thought about all of the above elements, but as always, I'm particularly intrigued to know what you thought. If anyone else has seen the Fifth Step, either prior to its run at at Soho Place or since it has opened there, let us all know what you thought of the play in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy listening to my review and want to hear more, make sure you're subscrib right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any upcoming videos or following me on podcast platforms. For now though, here is what I thought of the Fifth Step. So a little background first of all on the play. This was commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland. They approached the writer David Ireland to create something for the actor Jack Lowden, who is a rising star of the screen but was particularly keen apparently to work with the National Theatre of Scotland. And good for him. So David Ireland wrote this two person play. It was an idea he had already been considering and it speaks very personally to his own experience with alcohol, or so it tells us in the program here. Now the version that was seen in Edinburgh at The festival in 2024 has apparently been substantially reworked. It has also been restaged by director Finder Hertog, who is a Glasgow based theater maker. And the staging, which I will go on to discuss a little bit later on, is actually one of the elements of this production that I found to be the most exciting. But if you haven't visited at Soho Place before, it's a unique and very new theatrical space. It's adaptable and it can be, you know, put into different configurations. But the one that it seems to default to more often than not is a in the round space with a large rectangular playing space in the middle of three different tiers of completely encompassing seating, meaning that no individual audience member is ever more than six rows away from the stage. The idea is that it's meant to be not only very accessible, but also it is raked in such a way to ensure that everybody has a great view. There is plenty of legroom. It's a more comfortable, more immersive and more engaging theatrical experience, addressing a lot of the issues with historic old buildings. And it's a really exciting auditorium with a great many benefits and a lot of exciting theatrical possibility to it. I think the things that work best there are, you know, because we are encircling the action and because it is so close to us, are things which are gripping and character driven. When I saw the trilogy of Death of England plays staged there over the course of a single day, it was so immediate and so urgent to be among that space. And it felt sort of like these characters and their choices in an ultra contemporary British society were being put on trial. And like we were all invoked in the thing and we were inescapably involved in it. And you couldn't get past your own culpability, really. And that's also what makes it a great venue for a play like this, because this has a similar sort of immediacy and an intensity. It is incredibly naturalistic. Essentially, we are watching the growing dynamic between these two men, who don't know each other particularly well at the beginning, but also have such a specific and fascinating relationship, which I think is brilliantly ripe for theatricalization. And this was a very good idea for a play on that basis because, you know, you have so much shared understanding between them, between the young recovering alcoholic and their sponsor. But there's also a fascinating power here because the sponsor is there to support and to guide and to nurture, but also to ensure accountability and where necessary, to act in the role of teacher, in the role of parent, in the role of friend, in the role of confidant. And there is this extraordinary amount of truth and transparency in that relationship, but also a certain uncomfortable element in the power dynamic. And the complexities around alcoholism as a disease have been reasonably explored on stage already. I would say that this play focuses less on that. It's very much a characteristic of the Thing, but it's far more interested in the dynamic between the two of them. So we see a handful of conversations spread out over time as their relationship begins to shift. And interestingly, it's not alcohol that plays a role in changing the way that they feel about each other. It's a lot more to do with religion or, as it might be more appropriate to say, faith. And this is because in the introductory moments between the two of them, where they're having a very frank and honest conversation despite not knowing each other that well, and we're sort of trying to figure out the exact circumstances of this conversation and this meeting. Jack Loden's character, named Luca, who is the younger of the two men, immediately reveals to Martin Freeman's character that he thinks that he might be an incel. And there is plenty of similarly bleak comedy at the beginning of the Thing. Only after a little more conversation with James, Martin Freeman's character transpires that Luca is just desperately lonely and would really enjoy companionship, something that James doesn't necessarily think that he's ready to explore at this stage in his sobriety. And as James dispenses both advice and instruction, Luca asks a great many personal questions of him, of his family life, of his background as an alcoholic. And eventually we arrive at a conversation around faith. James describes himself sort of proudly as a recovering Catholic, with Luca indicating at this time, amidst his particularly bleak and empty worldview, he does not consider himself to be a man of faith. James shares an anecdote about the idea that, you know, some people think there is some school of thought that on the journey of Alcoholics Anonymous, of that tried and tested 12 step program, some believe that some kind of a spiritual awakening and revelation is necessary in order to succeed and achieve lasting sobriety. There is a slight danger here in the element of miscommunic between the two, just in the slight gulf between their personalities and their level of insight and understanding. Because what James recalls anecdotally and just mentions in order to pose ideas and create conversation, Luca interprets as direct instruction. So Luca almost hears that a spiritual awakening is a necessity for him, and he will later claim that that is something that he was instructed to go out and do. Now, this Storyline around faith will go on to be a huge factor in the deterioration of the trust between these two men. And I was reminded immediately, almost as soon as it was invoked, of that other major contemporary play about the addiction and rehabilitation process. Of course, People, Places and things by Duncan macmillan that also talks about God inevitably getting involved in the whole process of recovery. And I suppose that's born out of this sense of desperation and the inclination to cling to something bigger than yourself and to gain belief in a higher power. But it's not really those ideas that motivate the action in the conversation in this play. It's almost more of faith and religion as an identity. In any case, by this point I've gained a little more clarity around what the title of this play refers to. The fifth step is the fifth out of the famous 12 steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. This step refers to the act of confession and admitting wrongdoing and. And transgressions to those who you may have harmed during alcoholism. Specifically, the wording around this, and this is interesting, is an admission to God, to oneself, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongdoing. The play carries in many ways a sense of multiple inevitabilities. This dangerous quality in the dynamic between the two of them feels as though it's heading somewhere less than productive. And the God of it all, the faith of it all, is just one part of that. Because though James does his best to keep Luca within strict parameters, he's also trying to understand him a little bit better and trying in earnest. It seems to help him improve his life and feel positively about his life, but also discouraging him from undertaking things that would be distracting from his journey from alcoholism, which is, as he frames it, the most important thing. To this end, he reveals personal details. When asked when Luca wants to know about James's relationship with his own sponsor, who has since passed away, he talks about his experiences with him, the fact that his sponsor was gay. There's a hilarious tangent here about gay aa, which is just a great setup for comedy, aside from the fact that, you know, we find some funny ways to talk about it, which I should note is Alcoholics Anonymous, specifically for gay people. It's not. It's not like the homosexuals. That's a different and non positive thing. But when James mentions his sponsor, he becomes one of a handful of other alcoholic characters who exist in the outside of this play and are never seen, but motivate certain shifts, this being the first when the is a sort of a comic unease Introduced into the room as James tells Luca that his sponsor, when he was an alcoholic, was a former arsonist who used to get drunk and set fires in crew and then found himself being aroused by the sound of fire engines. And as we meet them, these characters feel utterly stark in their personalities. James is grounded and level headed and emotionally intelligent and in full control of the conversation between the two of them, which puts him in a sort of more pseudo parental role. And Luca feels juvenile and the ignorant of many things, but with a little bit of a charm to him and a little bit of a wit as well. When they get on to the conversation of talking about films and he's doing impressions of different the actors, then we start to see a little light in him of the personality that he has beyond his frustrations around his alcoholism and his loneliness and his attitudes towards women, honestly, which to a certain extent is shared between the two of them. The way that women are spoken about throughout these conversations is consistently objectifying, consistently sexualized. There are a couple of honestly cheap jokes in there about the female anatomy, which, you know, may or may not be authentic to the way that these characters would speak about their wives or sexual partners. What resonates considerably more with the audience is James's reaction when Luca expresses jealousy that James is married and says how James wouldn't understand Luca's position because he has, and I quote, and I apologize P on tap. And it's James's steady and measured explanation that in his, you know, lengthy marriage this is not necessarily the case that draws a lot of laughs. The biggest of which comes after Luca makes the fairly shocking admission that he watches porn perhaps 20 times a day and compares this to what James has told him about having perhaps a comparatively infrequent sexual relationship with his wife. To which James replies, it's more than you're having, which is a great laugh and part of the conversation that brokers a little bit more of a closeness and a friendship between the two men. But there's also already a sense of competition there as well. In general, it feels as though comedy is a tool that's being used here to abate the growing tension and the warning signs of, like I said, a danger in this dynamic. And it's perhaps expected in the narrative when James chastises Luca for what he perceives to be a misstep. Having heard from someone else that Luca was spotted in a pub with some interesting dialogue arising from the clash between the two of them here as Luca first explains that he was drinking a dinner, Diet Coke, just to Be sociable with friends. James replying that you wouldn't necessarily go to a brothel for a kiss, which is why it's still a bad idea to be around alcohol. But a decent amount of exploration of drinking culture in the uk, which I think there are substantially more to say about and could be even more thoroughly investigated by a more in depth play that wasn't so focused on these characters as a pair. But if that was a plot line that we were expecting, what happened subsequently I would say isn't. Because Luca returns does describing himself as a decent amount more self actualized. Having had what he perceives to be a religious experience at the gym, he started going to the gym very frequently in order to try and improve himself. He has been taking in rather black and white terms the advice that he believes James has been giving him. And he tells James, I promise you, you don't know where this is going. That he has been running on the treadmill alongside the actor Willem Dafoe, who James doesn't immediately know. But when he later describes him as a movie star, Luca hysterically repl that he's more of a highly respected, ubiquitous character actor. And wildly this is the doorway through which a conversation around faith returns into the action. And this has really interesting implications because it definitely destabilizes James's professionalism and objectivity here. He seems to be very shaken by conversations around specifically Christianity and organized religion. There are some criticism from him of the impact of organized religion in the world. And in response to Luca telling him, whether he like it or not, that Jesus is in his life now and in his heart, James replies that real faith is something that you earn. What it is not is meeting a bearded bloke down the gym and calling him Jesus. Which admittedly is difficult to disagree with. But we can also see increasingly clearly that there is something between these two men that will eventually no longer be productive. There are early indications of a toxicity and a problematic nature to their relationship. And the conversations between them get more troublingly. Personal. Accusations begin to emerge. And it's no longer just Luca whose behavior we question in this scenario. And our destination here is a tangible power struggle between the two men. Luca feels that little bit more fulfilled and like he has, you know, influences in his life, whether that's church or religion, the exercise, whatever he is finding perhaps a relationship that can speak to him more powerfully than James can. James is no longer positioned to be the individual voice guiding Luca. And at the same time as James is announcing more perceived transgressions from Luca on his 12 step journey. Luca is introducing the idea that he has heard rumors about James's prior misconduct. All of which elevates everything to a much more intense place. The whole thing is cumulatively tense. There is still comedy throughout. It becomes less frequent and the shock value increases. There's about a 10, 15 minute stretch where it feels as though we all know in the room what the huge revelation is that's coming. And it seems baffling not to talk about it until eventually they do. And that's not actually quite what's going on. But taking us back to the title of the play, it's this idea around confession and accountability for each of these two men, and who is willing to embrace it and who is trying to avoid it, potentially, that becomes paramount to the play's conclusion. And the idea of faith is all mixed up in that as well. Not just because of the wording and the mention of God, but also because it's so inherent to Catholicism, the idea of confession there as well. Now, central, I think, to Finder Hertog's direction of this piece is the idea that the relationship between the two of them, until it sours, feels reasonable. And all of this dialogue, whether it's a little shocking, whether it's comedic, still feels rational and believable. As you know, Luca pushes back against the constraints that have been established around him and this idea of authority as the two of them talk about different relationships with their fathers. And we all come to recognize that that is, you know, a big the issue, a button that can be pushed for Luca. And at the beginning, Martin Freeman's character, James, is so calm and he is often sat and he is reserved. And Luca is the one who is pacing anxiously and childishly. And even the way that he sits on chairs and he moves around the space, there is a furtive quality, as if he's trying to escape scrutiny. And there is something very adolescent about the way that he occupies this space. And then there's a real shift when he goes away and does more work on himself, when he talks about fitness, when he talks about faith. And there is still a very impassioned, sort of a giddy quality. But evidently this gets under James's skin. And for the last 25 minutes of this play, I was fascinated by every single staging choice, because it being about a power struggle between these two. The choices that you make with the staging are so pointed. There's a slight little lip around the edge of the stage which certain characters would step up onto, affording them the literal higher Ground as they gained it morally. At the same time, when Luca is pointing out hypocrisy, what he believes to be hypocrisy in James, his sponsor, he takes this position and James becomes the one who is moving more erratically when he is faced with very serious accusations. By the time that James is pressing Luca to reveal more information about a new relationship that he has had to admit to, the two of them are essentially squaring off in a boxing ring, almost both very light on their feet and pacing back and forth. And when this moves one step further, and James asks outright if something that he suspects is true, in fact is, he's almost chasing him around the outside of the perimeter of the space, with him now being the one reduced to this sort of a juvenile playground sort of equality. Having really let his professionalism lapse by this point, James has become visibly paranoid. And what seemed like a sort of a heat of circumstances that was enough to motivate a physical fight cools off, with the two of them retreating to opposite corners. And then we get a more violent conclusion as a result of a far more chilling and cold interaction between the two, in which James basically goads the younger man into striking him by telling him shockingly dreadful things, hugely unprofessional things, by using wounding truths going back to their very first meeting. And there are moments of dialogue here which are really shocking. There are certain physical acts which are shocking. But the idea that this builds towards a fight doesn't feel like a surprise to us because it's been intimated by that staging. Jenny Ogilvy is credited as the movement director here. I also want to talk briefly about sound and lighting and it's, you know, more creatively light handed. But there are a couple of really brilliant and really synchronized cues, as well as some exciting transitions. The sound design and compositions are credited to Mark Melville and Lizzie Powell is the lighting designer. There's one moment where Martin Freeman snaps a chair in perfect conjunction with a sound and lighting cue that's just so satisfying. Which brings us nicely to talking about the performances. Now. This was not my first time seeing Martin Freeman on stage. I've actually seen him do Shakespeare before, which I felt was more of a disappearance into a character than we often see him do. This feels like a very Martin Freeman role, the role of James that he's playing in this. And it was nice to see him destabilized a little by the end. And it was nice to see him push to the point of aggression and paranoia, because otherwise and up to that point, the place where all of the comedy was coming from, the place where all the characterization was coming from, was very familiar of work that we've seen Martin Freeman do very often. And he does it very well. And that's the type of a character that he does a great job of crafting. Crafting. But both from the perspective of having seen him do that often on screen before and, you know, now being in an audience, watching him do something on stage, you do want to see something a little more heightened and a little more theatrical. And he's still effortlessly funny. And inherently, I mean, the whole low effort comedy thing is something that he's really perfected. And what's particularly satisfying is that there are some real chillingly villainous things that he does. But also at the height of his hysteria and. And stress and anger with Luca, he's still able to get some brilliant laughs by reacting and pronouncing names in a certain way, when the name that he hears is not the name that he's expecting to hear. And he repeats that name over and over and over again until it becomes comical. It's very well delivered. Then you have Jack Loden, who is really fascinating, I think, in this, because he's instantly quite charming for all of the wrong reasons. Reasons. And everything that he's talking about, all of the realities of his life at the beginning and the way that he feels about himself and the way that he feels about women and his own mental health and what he's doing and how he's spending his time, it all ought to be utterly dreadful. But there's something in his delivery and there's something in the wit of it and the humanity of it all that makes it kind of inescapably endearing. Now, his comedy, for the most part, comes from this sort of undeterred insistence that he has and the utter belief he has in the things which he is saying when he talks about believing that he has just seen Willem Dafoe at the gym. And he recalls this anecdote where he's saying, every time I run at a different speed on the treadmill, Willem Dafoe was there copying me. It's so funny. And what typifies him, I think, is this combination of the youthful charm and the adolescence where he feels sort of emotionally more immature than he ought to, with this slightly dangerous quality that we immediately notice as well, that eventually anything fades as he tries to do better by himself and is almost passed like a hot potato from one actor to the others. There are traits from him that we start to see in James where one felt a little more, you know, conversationally invasive, the other then picks that up a little bit later and, you know, they both end up just being very raw, very realistic human beings. Which brings me towards the end of my thoughts on the Fifth Step at at Soho Place. I enjoyed this play. I thought in terms of the subject matter, there's more than it could have explored, certainly something like people, places and things. And not to compare one work to the other, but offers us a very different and more substantial insight into the rehabilitative process. And there are facets within this, within the whole sponsor dynamic, within the act of the Fifth Step itself, that you felt perhaps could have been mined for a little more theatrical investigation. It feels like there is more that this could have said around masculinity and around consent. And it's sort of the end enters into the room of many of these conversations and then retreats a little prematurely. A big part of which is also the fact that it's 80 minutes long. I think this is going to be a fairly brilliant conversation starter for people who have gone to see this play together. I think it continues an utterly necessary conversation about the mental health of young men, but at its most fascinating, it's just a character study about these two forces, these two individuals who come into violent opposition and you know, how they slowly get there and what happens when when they do. And if that sounds like something that you would be interested in seeing at the theater, go and check out the Fifth Step at at Soho Place in the West End. In the meantime, if you already have, I would love to know what you thought of it. Please let us all know in the comments section down below. And if you enjoyed my review, make sure you're subscribed right here on YouTube. Turn on those notifications so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews, vlogs or other theatre themed content or go follow me on podcast platforms. Thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.