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First Night Freeman and Lowden sizzle with chemistry in this slippery comedy
The London Standard
|May 22, 2025
Intense performances from Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman illuminate David Ireland's slippery comedy about alcoholism, faith and masculinity.
Lowden is Luka, a young Scot seeking a father figure in Freeman's James, the sponsor he chooses to help him undergo the 12-step programme to sobriety with Alcoholics Anonymous. The fifth step in this, apparently, is to admit your wrongs to God (or at least a god "of your own understanding"), to yourself and to another person: the play also introduces us to the concept of transgressive "13th-stepping".
The two men's relationship sours when Luka transitions from the quasi-religious strictures of AA to hardcore Christian belief after encountering Jesus — in the shape of Willem Dafoe — on the treadmill of his local gym. Alongside Marie and Rosetta at the Rose Theatre, this is the second two-hander in a week about God: there must be something in the water.
This story is from the May 22, 2025 edition of The London Standard.
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