Patrick Marmion Reviews The Fifth Step: Jack Lowden vs. Martin Freeman in a Ruthless Drama

Jack Lowden has become one of the hottest properties on telly since starring opposite Gary Oldman in Apple TV+’s hit spy drama Slow Horses. 

In fact, our Jack’s got so big that no less a figure than Hobbit and Sherlock star Martin Freeman has become his wingman in a new play by David Ireland about two men in Alcoholics Anonymous. 

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

Lowden’s nervy Scottish character, Luka, is a desperate loner and end-of-road boozer who identifies as an incel, or ‘involuntary celibate’. He’s grown jealous of married mates who have sex (not his word) ‘on tap’. 

And, in addition to long-haul descents into alcohol bingeing, he has porn and self- abuse as surrogate, back-up addictions. He is, in short, in free fall. 

We are a long way from Lowden’s ill-fated MI5 agent River Cart- wright in Slow Horses.

Jack Lowden confronts Martin Freeman in David Ireland’s edgy – and four-letter – study of alcohol addiction

In desperation, Luka has submitted to the 12-step programme for recovering drinkers in a seemingly vain attempt to turn his life around with help from his 25-years-sober mentor James (Freeman). 

And 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. 

Lowden’s wounded puppy-dog eyes come as standard for a young man who is dangerously lonely and hopelessly vulnerable. It’s an understated, nervously volatile display that’s simultaneously edgy and guarded. 

Luka has whole repertoires of defensive ticks – wardrobes of scratching, catalogues of leg tremors and gamuts of blinking. But, blessed with a benign, unaffected idiocy, you can’t help loving Lowden’s lost soul, who’s been saved after encountering Jesus one night at a multi-gym. 

Freeman by contrast as the fully-recovered Mr Ordinary oozes the complacent personality of a Marks & Spencer mannequin. With typical highly-focused fidgeting, Freeman’s James is an ostentatiously patient alter-ego and secular confessor to Luka. 

But 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. 

Yes, God features quite prominently in Ireland’s ruthlessly unecclestiastical writing, although there must be moments when the Almighty wishes he could bow out. But 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. 

Lowden’s nervy Scottish character, Luka, is a desperate loner and end-of-road boozer.Freeman by contrast as the fully-recovered Mr Ordinary oozes the complacent personality of a Marks & Spencer mannequin

Martin at the press night after party with his children Joe and Grace

David Tennant showed support for his friends alongside his daughter Olive 

Lesley Manville attends the West End Opening Night

Gavin & Stacey star Matthew Horne attended with his wife Celina Bassili 

This left viewers joyously grateful. Women in the audience in particular near howled with laughter at Luka’s pitifully sexist delusions. 

We men may prefer to crawl under a stone. Nor does Finn Den Hertog’s production leave either of his actors anywhere to hide, with spectators on all four sides of a rectangle of fitted carpet. 

So, in addition to the unburthening and self-torture, it’s a chastening exercise in forgiveness and acceptance. Unsurprisingly, tickets have sold out. Pray for an extension or returns. 

The Fifth Step runs until July 26