@sohoplace

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. That’s a slightly glib summary. But in the programme Ireland explains how he found Jesus in 2020, and it does a lot to explain where the play’s coming from. The Fifth Step is about two men in Alcoholics Anonymous – which Ireland was a member of in the past – but the play is not really about the instition as a whole. Rather, it’s AA’s ambiguous spiritual dimension that holds the most interest to the playwright.  With a big scruffy beard and his natural Scottish accent front and centre, Jack Lowden looks and sounds a world away from his breakthrough role in Slow Horses. He plays young Glaswegian Luka, an inarticulate, twitchy mess of a man; an alcoholic who suffered a terribly abusive upbringing and is desperately lonely to boot. His very first words in the play are ‘I think I might be an incel’. He’s addressing Martin Freeman’s James, an AA old-timer who exudes a sort of seen-it-all serenity and is clearly angling for Luka to appoint him as his sponsor – something Luka duly does.  The men get on well enough so long as James remains in the driving seat. But then something odd happens: the programme really starts working for Luka. Or it starts working in unexpected ways. James – who is staunchly atheist –...