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Watching people excel thrillingly five feet away is a reward in itself

Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden in The Fifth Step at @sohoplace. Photo: Johan Persson

Sometimes it sort of doesn’t matter what the play is like because it’s all about the actors.

What I’ve seen

The Fifth Step, on now at @sohoplace, is one of those plays. Not that there’s much wrong with it, in and of itself. A tight 90 minutes exploring the relationship between a jittery, needy young man, Luca, played by Jack Lowden, early on in his journey with Alcoholics Anonymous, and James, Luca’s sponsor (Martin Freeman), in his fifties and 25 years sober, with a genial tendency to mansplaining, it doesn’t outstay its welcome at all.

David Ireland’s script, which gently wrongfoots you whenever it sees the opportunity, is very funny, and very well-delivered. James’s chummy authority is lapped up by the booze and porn-addicted Luca, in desperate need of a good father figure. But when the lad eagerly grasps at an unconventional spiritual awakening and embarks on his own path, diverting from the one James thinks he should be on, the older man’s carefully constructed bonhomie begins to crumble, revealing a darker core.

Both actors are brilliant. Lowden crackles with energy and allows Luca’s vulnerability to sit close to the surface, while Freeman is utterly convincing as a man trying his best to believe his own nonsense. It does feel a bit simplistic at times (apparently it’s been hugely changed from the original, darker version that played in Edinburgh, with Sean Gilder - who stars, with Lowden, until a particularly brutal scene in season four, as Bad Sam in Slow Horses - in the role of James) and there’s a fair bit of thinly veiled therapy-speak, but as one of my podcast co-hosts pointed out, you’re never quite sure whether or not Ireland is skewering that or parroting it.

There were a couple of niggling things. I do probably have a slight aversion to work that seems to be peddling a religious agenda of some kind. Ireland (Cypress Avenue, Ulster American) did go through AA but eventually gave it up in favour of going to church and reading the bible, but it’s not entirely clear what flavour of spirituality he’s infusing this with. It does have something that makes me slightly uneasy, but that’s more my problem than anything else.

I’m also not absolutely sure what it’s saying about AA - is it that it works but in different ways for different people? Is it that it works, but that once you’re through it there’s a constant need for vigilance that never goes away? Is it that it doesn’t really work? I suspect not the latter, because I think that’s not true and the former two points certainly are, but I was kind of uncertain as to where it stood.

Still, it’s extremely entertaining, and a wonderful opportunity to watch two fantastic actors bouncing off each other, in the round. It’s on until July 26.

I was expecting to absolutely love Shucked. It was a big hit on Broadway, so there’s been a certain amount of excitement (among people like me, who think about this kind of thing) about this short five week engagement at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. I didn’t hate it, but the most I can say about it is that I found it mildly diverting.