Theatre Review: The Fifth Step & Giant — provocative theatre at its best

Giant at The Harold Pinter Theatre, London (30th June 2025)

The West End is no stranger to provocative drama, but this season brings two particularly electrifying productions to the fore: The Fifth Step, written by David Ireland, at the intimate new Soho Place theatre, and Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre, starring a career-best John Lithgow as the complicated and controversial Roald Dahl. Both plays are unmissable, but for entirely different reasons. The Fifth Step is a taut chamber piece about toxic masculinity and accountability, while Giant tackles the loaded intersection of free speech, anti-Semitism, and literary legacy. If the former crackles with tension, the latter detonates with debate.

The Fifth Step at the Soho Place Theatre, London (25th June 2025)

In The Fifth Step, Martin Freeman plays a sharp, guarded therapist who is also an AA sponsor to Jack Lowden’s volatile new sponsee. The fifth step of the Alcoholics Anonymous programme — “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” — provides the central theme of the play. Over 90 fast-paced minutes, Freeman and Lowden’s characters circle each other in a sparring match of confession, manipulation, camaraderie, and ultimately confrontation. Both men are recovering alcoholics, but the sponsor-sponsee relationship quickly unravels into something much murkier and more co-dependent.

The play isn’t always subtle in its exploration of masculinity, and the dialogue at times sounds a bit too much like thematic exposition, but Ireland’s script benefits from tight construction and razor-sharp pacing. The real draw here is the palpable chemistry between the two leads. Freeman delivers a characteristically understated but tightly coiled performance, while Lowden, best known as the composed if not entirely competent River Cartwright in Slow Horses, is revelatory in a raw and unpredictable role. He brings a feral energy that keeps the audience constantly off balance.

The Soho Place theatre is practically a third character. With its intimate layout, the audience feels like they’re there on stage with Freeman and Lowden. Every flinch, glance, and tightening jaw becomes magnified. It’s difficult to imagine this play working half as well in a larger venue; the claustrophobia is part of its power.

Meanwhile, over at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant is a good play elevated into greatness by one of the most arresting performances London has seen in years. John Lithgow commands the stage as Roald Dahl, portraying the beloved children’s author not as a cuddly literary figure (which of course he wasn’t), but as a deeply flawed, narcissistic, embittered, occasionally brilliant, and unmistakably anti-Semitic angry old man. The play centres on a real incident in 1983 when Dahl wrote a book review in which he lashed out at Israeli actions in Lebanon just before the release of The Witches. The backlash was swift and severe. In the play, his American publisher sends a representative, the principled and increasingly exasperated Jessie Stone (strongly played by Aya Cash), to plead with him to retract his comments.

The fireworks that ensue are both intellectual and emotional. Lithgow’s Dahl is a monster — but a mesmerising one. He shifts from an almost seductive charm to cruel arrogance in a heartbeat, daring the audience to look away even as his opinions shock and repulse. The play asks difficult, timely questions: Is criticism of Israel inherently anti-Semitic? Should public figures be denied platforms for expressing repugnant views? Rosenblatt’s writing is sharp and provocative, and the themes resonate powerfully in today’s fraught political climate.

If Giant falters, it’s in some of the supporting performances. I found Rachel Stirling as Dahl’s fiancee a bit too emotive: lots of exasperated sighing, eye-rolling, and signalling of Big Feelings. On the other hand, Elliot Levey, as Dahl’s (Jewish) UK publisher Tom Maschler, fares better in a complex role that I felt could have been developed further. But the core of the play is rock-solid, and Lithgow delivers what is surely the performance of the year. Subtle? Not at all. But effective? Deeply. Giant is a bold and necessary piece of theatre, and its 2025 Olivier wins for Best Play and Best Actor are wholly deserved.

In sum: go for the ideas, stay for the acting. London theatre doesn’t get much more vital than this. And speaking of vital theatre, next week I’m seeing Jamie Lloyd’s new production of Evita starring Rachel Zegler, no stranger to controversial views herself. Watch this space for my review!

Jon Malysiak is the Global Publishing Manager at StoryTerrace, the author of Posh, and co-author of the upcoming Art in the Extreme.