The Fifth Step
90 minutes, no interval
The Fifth Step - 2025 West End History , Info & More
@sohoplace
4 Soho Place, Charing Cross Road, W1D 3BG London
After many years in the 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, James agrees to become the sponsor of newcomer Luka.
On the journey to sobriety, the pair bond over black coffee, trade stories, and build a fragile friendship out of their shared experiences.
On the cusp of Step 5, their conversations must turn to confessionals, with progress hinging on Luka revealing secrets that could lead back to alcohol. But it’s clear that James also has dangerous truths in his past, truths that threaten the trust on which both their recoveries depend.
Following an acclaimed sold-out Edinburgh season, Olivier Award-winner Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, Dunkirk) reprises his role as Luka joined in the West End by Emmy, BAFTA and SAG Award winner Martin Freeman (The Responder, Sherlock) as James.
Directed intimately in-the-round by Finn den Hertog, The Fifth Step is a provocative, entertaining and subversively funny new play from David Ireland.
The Fifth Step - 2025 - West End Cast
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR The Fifth Step
Caustic playwright David Ireland unexpectedly finds God in this erratic dark comedy starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman
6 / 10
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: a scene in which Luka hallucinates that James has bunny ears is quite funny but the cartoonish questioning of his sanity needlessly muddies what his whole deal is. In general, Finn den Herzog’s minimalist production is tentative about grabbing the material by the scruff of the neck. The fact the play is specifically set in Glasgow gets drowned out and feels like it’s more a nod to Lowden’s accent more than anything reflected in Milla Clarke’s sterile set.
The transfer of David Ireland’s new play runs at @sohoplace until 26 July
8 / 10
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, as it examines the relationship between Luka, a young man struggling to conquer his addiction, and James, the older man who becomes his mentor when he joins Alcoholics Anonymous. But it has been substantially rewritten and also recast. Jack Lowden still plays Luka, turning him into a compelling mix of jittery unhappiness and wounded righteousness as he goes on a journey that takes him from despair – “I think I might be an incel” – through dubious revelation, to the knowledge that he isn’t the only one in this relationship with problems.
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by Aliya Al-Hassan - May 20, 2025
After many years in the 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, James agrees to become the sponsor of newcomer Luka. On the cusp of Step 5, their conversations must turn to confessionals, with progress hinging on Luka revealing secrets that could lead back to alcohol. But it’s clear that James also has dangerous truths in his past, truths that threaten the trust on which both their recoveries depend.
by Cindy Marcolina - May 19, 2025
Plays like The Fifth Step don't come around often. Those whose layered philosophical exoskeleton props up their own dramatic contradictions in quietly superb theatre. At its core, though less pure black comedy and more complex introspective drama coated in dark irony than what you’d expect from David Ireland, it has that delicious push-and-pull that only Ireland can write. It’s a potluck of themes. Alcoholism, recovery, resentment, masculinity, spirituality, family, class, what-have-you populate a play that’s as tense as it is caustic.
by Chloe Rabinowitz - May 14, 2025
You can now get a first look at photos of the West End transfer of David Ireland’s acclaimed new play The Fifth Step, starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman. See photos here!
The Fifth Step History
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