It’s no spoiler to say “JOB”, Max Wolf Friedlich’s electrifying synapse of play, features a highly stressed young woman pointing a gun at a therapist in his office. That’s how the play begins.
It’s a strange, if not downright delusional, way for Jane (Sydney Lemmon) to get the company-mandated, mental health sign-off from Loyd (Peter Friedman) that woud allow her to return to her job after an epic mental collapse at work. The video of her breakdown went viral, turning her meltdown into a meme.
But it’s not therapy Jane is seeking. Far from it. Over the next 80 minutes, this taut transfer from Off Broadway reveals itself to be a terrifying trip to the dark side of the internet.
Once the gun is back in her satchel, another kind of stand-off begins. Jane, a Gen Z techie, is determined to return to her “content moderation” position at work, in which she moves offensive material off-platform at a Bay Area tech giant.
For most of its duration, the play appears to be a tense tug-of-war between a disturbed employee and a trapped therapist who is surely not going to sign off to her demands, but who instinctively feels the need to help a troubled and conflicted soul who insists, “This is not who I am.”
Loyd, who prides himself in taking on challenging cases, cautiously tries to probe the root of Jane’s anguish and panic attacks as he parses her past. He gradually learns about her family and personal history, her empowerment issues at work, and her obsession with and access to the violence that she witnesses in the world — and in the cyber cosmos.
Jane counters Loyd’s psychological counseling with a cynical worldview and generational indictments. Yet despite everything, she also longs for a safe place to just lie down, preferably “in the ER where there are no choices at all.”
Her rage at first seems to be against “the Boomers,” which Loyd represents and which she disdains. But her anger is more specific than general indictments. She has a job to do — and here, too, that is as meaningful as it is overwhelming.
Friedman summons the same cool and ambiguous professionalism he displayed in his role of corporate exec Frank Vernon in HBO’s “Succession.” In a terrific performance, the actor makes Loyd’s sensitivity and calming persona a natural product of his long-ago, Berkeley hippie days. But he is also aware of the high stakes at play. “Please realize what is happening here,” he reminds Jane when she demands her medical pass. “You are holding me hostage.”
Lemmon is riveting, and brings an intelligent fierceness to her character. Sometimes she’s manic and skittish; at others, she’s immobilized and goes to another plane of reality, only brought back by duty to her all-important job — one in which she feels the power to “extract the darkness” from the web “and take it with me.”
Though it’s a mighty and purposeful mission ( “I have work to do. It’s not a choice”), in this particular situation it’s one without a clear path forward.
The play’s title is in all caps, presumably because of the importance of Jane’s duties at the company and the Biblical-sized sacrifices she endures. (“It’s a privilege to suffer,” she says). Too often, though, the play feels overloaded with ideas, themes and moral conundrums scattered in random bursts and bytes. There are moments “JOB” comes close to going off the grid.
But then the play steers into a new and unexpected direction, upending the psychological thriller narrative as both characters are suddenly seen in vastly different lights. As the internet’s depths are further revealed, it becomes a horror story.
Cody Spencer’s unnerving sound design, Mextly Cousin’s seizures of lights and set designer Scott Penner’s island of an office, amid towers of screens, all add subliminally and directly to the production’s tension, finely calibrated by director Michael Herwitz.
This single-set, two-actor exploration of the new, shocking reality of “the internet, where we live” is likely to power up on many more stages to come. But those expecting a suspenseful office showdown or a techno-debate should buckle their seatbelts and brace themselves for a ride into cyber hell.