The Fifth Step

Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman are excellent in this intense but very funny two hander.  Luka (Lowden) is looking for a sponsor to help him through his AA programme and James (Freeman) is the older man who steps into that role.  Luka is a bundle of nervous energy, bouncing legs and fidgeting, whereas James is suave and under control.  

The play looks at what it means to put your trust in someone or something else, whether that’s a person. a programme or a religion and what happens when that turns out to be imperfect.  And it explores those themes very well.  But also, it’s very funny, with quick and smart lines thrown out with perfect timing for us to catch.  The laughs are so fast and frequent it’s possible to forget that there is also a drama there too. I liked the musical choices too, opening with 'I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)' by Johnny Cash and an addict himself of course, which set the scene for what was coming over the next hour and a half.  The scene changes were great too which didn't waste a moment in setting up for what would be coming next,

For a brief moment I thought they were going down a hackneyed storyline but it turned out to be perfectly pitched with a much more interesting take. Freeman does a great job of revealing James to us, a man who turns out to have huge amounts of suppressed anger and maybe some more complicated moral hinterlands than we see at first viewing (a Freeman speciality of course in recent years).  Meanwhile Lowden's Luka starts off as an emotionally vulnerable and chaotic mess, but in tiny steps gets himself together in a loud and energetic but also very subtle performance as he seeks redemption.

This was a great and very satisfying night out which was a lot of fun.   We were in the cheap sets up in the gods but I don’t think we missed anything.  And despite being up in the gods we have finally learnt our lesson and at the end we exited the auditorium very quickly to queue at the lift so that we could avoid the hell that is the stairway route out of this otherwise lovely theatre.