THE FIFTH STEP

@Sohoplace

★★★★

“the direction is slick and there’s always a sense that something is around the corner”

About halfway through this bracing alcohol-and-redemption two-hander, James suddenly appears in a rabbit’s head.

This is a call-back to a dream that Luka recounts, Luka being a newcomer to the step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the dream, his sponsor James appears like a rabbit, and so he does again in real life.

This is an interesting fantastical element, we think, seeing the world through Luka’s eyes.
James, in the rabbit’s head, offers Luka some cake.

‘What kind of cake?’ asks Luka.

‘Carrot.’

That’s the whole point of this elaborate set-up – a carrot joke. The rabbit’s head is swiftly dispatched and is of no further use or consequence.

Therein lies the tension at the heart of The Fifth Step. We can see playwright David Ireland’s impish inclinations at work. He can’t help himself. If there’s a gag, he’s going to veer off course to hoover it up whatever the cost to character, balance or timing. Now we’re thinking: that whole bit about Luka’s dream? Was that just there to construct the rabbit-carrot gag?

The writer really wants us laughing. He is successful – for it is a very funny play – but it is also an effortful and visible urge. It means many of those tight 90 minutes are devoted to set-ups and punchlines are not available to develop character, relationships and substance.

Because the play also has a hankering to tackle big issues. There is the overarching scenario – a suicidal alcoholic seeking aid from a long sober veteran. This leads to discussions about the oedipal reflexes of fathers and sons, spiritual awakenings, inventories of shameful behaviour (aka, the fifth step) and – hold on to your hats – sex. Lots and lots of talk about self-pleasuring.

The result is resoundingly entertaining but frustratingly slim.

That is not to say the audience is short-changed.

For one, it is a very comfortable watch. Yes, the expletive-rich script can prove occasionally jarring, but the action speeds along, the dialogue flies about like a pinball, the direction is slick and there’s always a sense that something is around the corner – some twist or revelation – that will provide fresh juice.

The stage (set design Milla Clarke), in the round, aids this sense of urgency. It is reminiscent of a scattered circle of folding chairs at an AA meeting but soon becomes a wrestling ring, with two minds locked in an embrace, fighting each other to a breathless standstill.

Secondly, there are the performances. They are simply superb – low-key and silky. Jack Lowden is the freshly minted star of Slow Horses and here he reprises his role as Luka from a short Edinburgh run. He is all chaotic energy, his leg always bouncing, his mind always racing.

Martin Freeman, as James, has a knack for freighted stillness. And, of course, he has a history of hangdog deadpanning that is firmly part of comedy legend. But we also know – if only from his Bafta-nominated role in The Responder – that beneath that placid exterior, roiling anger bubbles and seethes.

Their parts are underwritten and their relationship too mercurial to be wholly conclusive but in the moment, there is a wonderful chemistry. Finn Den Hertog’s direction makes full use of their combustible contrasts – younger and older, tall and short, keen and jaded, motionless and jittery.

All this makes for a brisk and punchy tour of two fractured psyches struggling to account for a lifetime of queasy impulses. Worth a watch, if you dare.

THE FIFTH STEP

@Sohoplace

Reviewed on 17th May 2025y

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Johan Persson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL(ISH) | ★★★★ | November 2024

DEATH OF ENGLAND: CLOSING TIME | ★★★★ | August 2024

DEATH OF ENGLAND: DELROY | ★★★★★ | July 2024

DEATH OF ENGLAND: MICHAEL | ★★★★★ | July 2024

THE LITTLE BIG THINGS | ★★★★ | September 2023

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN | ★★★★★ | May 2023

THE FIFTH STEP

★★★★

“This is a jaunty and compassionate production”

The confetti thrown in good cheer remains on the stage long after the wedding is over and the marriage has fallen apart in writer Chris Bush’s personal exploration of otherness and identity.

The reason for the break-up is not a dark secret revealed. Harry (Fizz Sinclair) has never hidden her yearning to escape her male body and Jo (Jade Anouka) – as a place-holder response – has always declared an attraction to women, so what’s the problem?

The writer calls on her own experiences coming out as trans to inform a script rich with frail humanity, grief and laughter.

One of the joys of director Ann Yee’s production is the four-strong chorus (Danielle Fiamanya, Laura Hanna, Beth Hinton-Lever and Serena Manteghi). They provide a sumptuous cacophony of well-calibrated, well-meaning voices, while occasionally bursting into snippets of siren song.

They become the friends who judge-don’t-judge the former golden couple. They are the bumptious official who can’t understand why the paperwork doesn’t tally, the fertility doctor with grim news, the HR woman tiptoeing around preferred toilet arrangements.

With a brisk and delightful energy, these vignettes of love, confusion and bureaucracy spill and elide and crash into one other. At pace, Jo goes crazy, drops out, and finds new love up a mountain with Gabby (a hoot, as played by Amanda Wilkin). Harry drifts aimlessly in a twilight world, not one thing or another.

On a rare trip out Harry is harassed by a man at a railway station. She is ill-equipped to cope, having no hinterland, and feels the experience “violating and validating”. Her girlfriends ask why she would opt for all that, the burden of the female sex, as if it were a lifestyle choice. Even then, Harry can’t join them on a protest march against gender violence because it’s not her story. Meanwhile, her exasperated mother (Jackie Clune) suggests she might like to switch back for a family wedding because “it’s not all about you”.

Jade Anouka and Fizz Sinclair perform wonders in their roles. Anouka is a bundle of nervous energy – and a devil on the dancefloor – while Sinclair carries a certain pained stillness, facing upheaval with the stoicism of necessity.

The end of the first act leaves both partners facing monstrous change. Jo is reluctantly pregnant and Harry about to pursue an irreversible course of hormones.

The beginning of the second act goes somewhere else entirely. They become literal monsters. We are in a fever dream cocoon where the misfits come to resolve themselves.

In a somewhat jarring sequence, Jo becomes a robot with a baby-filled silver cloche for a belly. She is alien to Gabby and to herself. Harry, thrashing in the shallows, is a fish-woman, caught in the net of some 18th century natural philosopher and put on show for the gawpers and prodders. While visually striking, it is an odd excursion, and we particularly feel the absence of Anouka’s jittery powerhouse presence. When they return to themselves, it’s a relief.

This is a jaunty and compassionate production, brilliantly designed and lit (Fly Davis and Anna Watson) and elevated by crisp direction and staging. The cast captures the glorious mess and majesty of change with impish relish and the production does an important job giving character to a story frequently lost to ranting headlines.

Chris Bush says this play has been a decade in the making and a lifetime in the preparation. Fortunately, no-one else has to wait that long.

Tag Archives: Milla Clarke

THE FIFTH STEP

★★★★

@Sohoplace

THE FIFTH STEP

@Sohoplace

★★★★

“the direction is slick and there’s always a sense that something is around the corner”