When you start a play with one character holding another at gunpoint, there’s nowhere to go but down.
Even though Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job—now on Broadway after acclaimed off-Broadway runs last fall and winter at the Soho Playhouse and Connelly Theater—runs only 80 minutes, it’s impossible to match the tension of the play’s grabby opening moments, when a new patient, Jane (Sydney Lemmon), pulls a gun on therapist Loyd (Peter Friedman).
Jane’s presence, she explains, is a condition of her employment, or of her continued employment, after a video of her in-office breakdown went viral. (We never actually see the video, but we know the type.) We know she’s some kind of “user support” specialist, but we don’t learn what that really means, or involves, until much, much later. She moderates content for a multinational tech behemoth (you can probably guess which one), which involves watching and flagging disgusting, violent, pornographic, horrific videos. “The internet isn’t some fringe ‘young people’ thing anymore—it’s where we live. It’s our home and I am the front line of defense—there’s nobody else,” she explains. “All of the worst things in the world come right to my computer screen.”
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
When she ticks off some of those “worst things”—we won’t repeat them here—well, it’s no wonder she ended up screaming in the middle of her office. Surely even daily panko-crusted tilapia and private yoga classes—both, she says, perks of her “elitist” San Francisco company—couldn’t be worth all that, could it? But for Jane, it seems like it is. “I know the pressure of having a job that is also your reason to live—a job you don’t feel like you chose,” Loyd later tells her in an attempt to connect. “We are both people saddled with a calling.”
There’s an intriguing push-pull to Friedlich’s script: Jane needs Loyd to give her the all-clear; at the same time, this overachieving zillennial techie clearly resents needing the approval of some Boomer with an earring who probably couldn’t program an Apple Watch. Lemmon and Friedman (Succession alum alert!), who have been with Job from the start, are terrific, especially in the drama’s most emotionally combative moments. But things go awry after a late-in-the-game twist that pushes the bounds of plausibility attempts (unsuccessfully) to move the play into psychological thriller territory.
Though it sounds like it’s arguing precisely the opposite, Job, directed by Michael Herwitz, presents a fascinating case in favor of smartphones—one that puts millennials and Gen Z squarely in the spotlight as the most brilliant minds online. “Everyone focuses on the bad stuff with phones because they’re afraid…and so they tell young women—the ones who’re best at phones—they tell us we’re stupid because they’re afraid of us—afraid of our potential, our sexuality, everything,” says Jane. “When a girl’s on her phone she’s ‘VAIN,’ she’s ‘self-obsessed’ and it’s like ‘no dude, she has a fucking wilderness skill.’” This is a character with much, much more to say.
Job opened July 30, 2024, at the Hayes Theater and runs through Sept. 29. Tickets and information: jobtheplay.com
