Reviews round-up for The Fifth Step starring Jack Lowden & Martin Freeman

"Lost soul Jack Lowden tackles Martin Freeman in a ruthless boxing match of a drama"

"As is common with AA stories, the subject matter is raw, excruciating and often alarmingly funny."

"... Lowden gives us an absolutely top-of-the-range performance, fully exploring the psychological cul-de-sacs and self-defeating wiles of his dismal character."

"... it's the work of Ireland's confrontational boxing match of a drama that ensures Freeman's shell of anti-charisma gets cracked too – as both men grapple with AA's Fifth Step of admitting their wrongs, to themselves, each other and to God."

"... mobilising four-letter, weapons-grade repartee, Ireland is never merely gratuitous and has a genius for embarrassing moral dilemmas. Never flattering us with what we'd like to believe of ourselves, he is an aficionado of unacceptable attitudes and shameful home truths."

"Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman go head to head"

"A new arrival at Alcoholics Anonymous meets with his apparently composed sponsor in David Ireland’s knotty, often hilarious two-hander"

"The Fifth Step – his [Jack Lowden's] first play since 2018 – gives him a character both volatile and vulnerable in a two-hander bristling with playwright David Ireland’s signature style of knotty provocation and ribald comedy."

"Ireland pulls off a tone that is sceptical yet earnest, echoing the sincerity and hangdog humour of the opening song, I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday), by Johnny Cash, who knew a thing or two about addiction."

"The humour ricochets as it did in den Hertog’s Square Go"

"The timing is impeccable throughout but as the tables are turned, and James’s behaviour is scrutinised, both give unsettling performances in a drama that specifically interrogates the role of a sponsor yet applies to multiple positions of authority and influence, including parenthood and priesthood."

"If the violence that eventually erupts is undercharged, the notes of absurdity are perfectly measured and it ends not with a bang but whimsy."

"Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman have terrific chemistry in this slippery comedy"

"The two actors tackle challenging material with aplomb in this tight, thought-provoking two hander"

"Intense performances from Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman illuminate David Ireland’s slippery comedy about alcoholism, faith and masculinity."

"It’s seriously good to see these two actors back in a theatre in such challenging material, on an open stage that offers nowhere to hide"

"They have terrific chemistry on stage, and it’s a wonder that they manage not to corpse during a central scene that involves Freeman wearing a pair of giant, fluffy bunny ears."

"As it is, it’s a tight, thought-provoking, 85-minute vehicle for two actors at the top of their game. There’s also an absolutely magnificent final, visual gag that’s almost worth the price of admission alone."

"Finn den Hertog’s production for the National Theatre of Scotland, first staged last year with Sean Gilder as James, deftly juggles the play’s shifts of mood and subject, as Ireland tips the scales from humour to seriousness, the quotidian to the numinous."

"Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden spar in crisply funny Alcoholics Anonymous play The Fifth Step"

"A candid, compassionate examination of honesty, faith and masculinity is revived at Soho Place, London"

"“I think I might be an incel,” announces Jack Lowden’s Luka at the beginning of The Fifth Step, launching one of the many startling conversations that pepper David Ireland’s very funny and bruisingly honest play"

"Ireland has talked about getting sober aged 23 and describes the play as, to some extent, an encounter between his older and younger selves. It certainly rings with authenticity and with the candour of someone who has examined themselves deeply. It ranges far and wide, touching on trust, honesty and belief, on addiction more broadly, and on loneliness, fatherhood and masculinity."

"The play dances to and fro, interweaving serious questions with crisply funny dialogue and combining the absurd with the profound."

"Lowden and Freeman are superb, matching each other step for step."

"It’s a play that raises more questions than it answers, not least about religion. But it’s also taut, funny and richly compassionate. In the end, it’s about getting through life and the difficulty of honesty, particularly with yourself."

"Jack Lowden is staggeringly good"

"The Slow Horses star is joined by Martin Freeman in David Ireland’s two-hander, which has been polished since its Edinburgh premiere"

"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... 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"

"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."

"The result is simpler yet freighted with a greater sense of unease. Things are left unsaid, and that, paradoxically, gives us more to ponder."

"A lot has changed since David Ireland’s The Fifth Step had its premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival last August. It’s still a play that teeters between comedy and dark horror... But it has been substantially rewritten and also recast"

"... Martin Freeman, who brings both supreme comic timing... and a terrifying burden of suppressed anger to the role. The play is tighter and tauter as a result of the changes; it reaches a tidier conclusion, though is no less full of questions and doubt."

"This examination of belief is one of the play’s themes. The other is the nature of masculinity itself, a theme that has only got more topical in the months since its unveiling."

"Freeman and Lowden spar like champions. The Fifth Step, carefully directed by Finn den Hertog, spins through many moods and multiple questions but it never loses its grip. It is a fascinating study of men with lives out of control, and the danger of the ways they seek to exert their power over others and themselves."

"Caustic playwright David Ireland unexpectedly finds God in this erratic dark comedy starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman"

"Playwright David Ireland has made a career out of saying the unsayable, which has in the past meant gags about rape, race and other such wearyingly ‘provocative’ transgressions. With The Fifth Step he’s taken it further yet: he’s written a play about how awesome God is."

"It’s a strange play: if Ireland has reined in the bad taste stuff, he remains a swearword-heavy comic writer with a specialty in bruising one-liners. But he never commits to a tone"

"In general, Finn den Herzog’s minimalist production is tentative about grabbing the material by the scruff of the neck."

"But there are fine performances from Lowden – an engaging move from chronic shyness to rapturous assertiveness – and Freeman, superbly slippery and self-absorbed as James."

"It’s uneven and didactic. Dialling down the outrage exposes the fact Ireland’s not exactly a man who writes deeply nuanced chracters. But it’s also funny, weird, well acted and provocative in a much more profound way than the nihilistic button pressing of old."

"Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman are an irresistible double act"

"Now on the West End, this authentic but patchy study of alcoholism from David Ireland is saved by terrific performances from its two stars"

"The bold-minded Belfast-born playwright David Ireland has a rare ability to attract top-flight actors for his darkly comic, often taboo-testing work, with unhinged male psyches his forte."

"I’d love to salute this as the writer’s deserved hour of triumph, not least because this piece transmutes his painful experience into the stuff of accessible entertainment."

"Yet despite bubbling with hard-won authenticity and again displaying Ireland’s flair for nifty, surprising dialogue, the short evening (80 minutes, directed by Finn den Hertog) winds up seeming curiously flat."

"The big saving grace is the makeshift double-act itself; both men winningly rising to the challenge of the ringside space’s gladiatorial intimacy."

"In The Fifth Step, Jack Lowden makes you feel sorry for an incel"

David Ireland's latest play is a dark comedy about masculinity and addiction

"... perhaps Lowden’s greatest triumph is that despite Luka’s propensity for violence, extreme misogyny and casual homophobia, he’s still ultimately empathetic, someone you come to understand as a product of his environment."

"Ireland’s script is witty and engaging, but the plot struggles to excite in the same way... And while the play’s themes of masculinity and religion are obviously hot-button issues, it replaces actual insight with a vaguely nihilistic shrug implying that everything and everyone is bad."

"Come for a dark comedy about addiction, stay for Lowden’s star quality."

"Jack Lowden explodes with energy opposite Martin Freeman’s sad dad in The Fifth Step"

"David Ireland’s new brutal exposé of Alcoholics Anonymous has some brilliant moments, but it fails to pack a real punch"

"In a cautious era, David Ireland is British playwriting’s most prominent provocateur. His ink-black comedies are full of oddly lovable bastards who bulldoze their way into delicate issues"

"Still, it feels both softer and less purposeful than the plays that made Ireland’s name – a chance for Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) to deliver a persuasive rendition of a vulnerable, impulsive young guy who’s shamelessly manipulated by Martin Freeman’s older sponsor."

"Like Ireland’s previous plays, The Fifth Step centres on the ugly clash between dogma and more complicated human realities. It’s gently fascinating, watching James flounder as his self-help AA platitudes do little to steer Luka away from his all-consuming obsessions, towards a more balanced kind of life."

"Director Finn den Hertog stages things simply, in the round. You’d expect a set-up like this to offer plenty of emotional punch, plenty of space for characters to unfurl, but the tension between these two performers doesn’t simmer as it should."