There are piquant pairings in the city of Jekyll and Hyde. In the international festival two plays about addiction and recovery. On the fringe, two shows about what might be thought to be the opposite: Gwyneth Paltrow.
David Ireland’s new drama, The Fifth Step, directed by Finn den Hertog for the National Theatre of Scotland, bangs on to the stage with the crackling, cackling dramatist’s talents flaring. Ireland, whose Cyprus Avenue (2016) features a man who thinks his baby granddaughter is Gerry Adams, now finds comedy and grimness, hallucination and naturalism in the exchanges between a young man (Jack Lowden) who has recently joined AA and his older mentor (Sean Gilder). The Fifth Step suggests, as did Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things, that addiction is part of the basic condition of being human.
