By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Published: | Updated:
Intense, darkly funny play starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
Watch now on National Theatre At Home
Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman go head-to-head in this funny, angry play about an alcoholic and his AA sponsor. It’s just the two of them on stage, surrounded by audience on every side – and it transfers very well to the screen partly because the focus on the two of them in that space is so clear.
The Fifth Step was originally staged in Edinburgh in 2024 with Sean Gilder in the Freeman role before this high-profile West End transfer. The characters are on an emotional seesaw, because the worse Luka (Lowden) seems to be doing, the calmer James (Freeman) is in the way he mentors him. When things appear to be going well for Luka, James becomes judgmental. ‘Alcoholics, we’re very selfish, we’re self-absorbed,’ he says to the younger man about halfway through, his anger clearly bubbling up underneath. What is he angry about?
Freeman has always had a skill for balancing suppressed rage with humour (his character in the Sky comedy Breeders is built around it), and Lowden is great at balancing vulnerability with a hint of menace. It’s difficult to imagine the roles being played the other way round, but it would be fascinating to see.
As it stands, it’s hard to take your eyes off the two of them in a visceral, energetic play that never feels like a performance, and in which you can’t see the ending coming. There’s no interval, and that’s a great call. The jokes are enough of a relief from the tension. (90 minutes)
