When I arrived in England years ago for my studies, I was fairly shocked at my new classmates’ drinking. That’s not just because most American undergraduates are legally prohibited from purchasing alcohol until their final year (though the underage find plenty of ways to get drunk too); in Britain I observed a rampant societal blessing to get pissed—from the one-pound-pint specials at the pub to ladies-drink-free nights—that goes much further than in the US.

The drinking culture was no less notable before a recent long weekend in London, from the canned gin and tonics at the lunchtime food truck and the crowds spilling into the street outside pubs at 4:30 p.m., to the clutched White Claws on the tube at 6:30 p.m. and the men in suits staggering around the West End.

That evening I caught the sold-out new play (and one of the hottest tickets in town) The Fifth Step, about the fragile, fractious friendship between a young man beginning an Alcoholics Anonymous program and his elder, seemingly wiser sponsor. The title refers to the part of the 12-step program known as the confession, during which members are encouraged to acknowledge “to God, to oneself, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Yet alcoholism is merely its ostensible topic; the show is broadly about faith and appetites, holy and otherwise, and how those intersect with power, whether in a pub, bedroom, or church.

Written by David Ireland and directed by Finn den Hertog, The Fifth Step opened in the West End earlier this month after an acclaimed sold-out run in Edinburgh, with Olivier Award–winner Jack Lowden reprising his role as Luka and now joined by Emmy, BAFTA, and SAG Award winner Martin Freeman as James.

It’s a tight 90-minute tête-a-tête set in the round at the plush, newish Soho Place theater, the stage a circle of trust that eventually deteriorates into a literal boxing ring with seesawing power dynamics. Propulsive with chuckles initially and later gasps, it also tackles the oft-fretted-about contemporary crisis of masculinity, particularly in Britain. After all, as James points out clearly and plainly (as most things are conveyed in this play), “The culture we live in, drinking’s associated with masculinity. You go to Paris and Brazil, no one gives a fuck if you’re drinking a chamomile tea.” (Another example: “I get the impression, Luka, that every man who’s ever been in your life has betrayed you. So you have difficulty trusting men. Older men.”)