Job

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Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job starts out with a bang or, more accurately, a near bang that elicits a couple of immediate worries: first, something awful will happen to a seemingly benign character and, second, a potentially overreaching playwright does not have anywhere dramatically to go after such a skillfully crafted throat-grabber. While the stress of the former concern rises and falls and rises again, the sense of foreboding from the other one eventually fades away as the thoughtful depths of Friedlich’s compact, mind-bending two-hander become increasingly apparent. Given this gradual profundity, Job is the rare work that genuinely rewards repeat attendance, an opportunity undoubtedly appreciated by theatergoers who have seen Job in either or both of its off-Broadway stints during the past year (the play’s world premiere at the SoHo Playhouse received an enthusiastic review from our Editor-in-Chief Victor Gluck).

Having co-starred in each of the previous productions, Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon once again assume their respective roles as the hippie-dippie Loyd, an aging, Berkeley-minted psychologist whose Welsh surname actually means “grey” (bless you, Wikipedia!), and Jane, a youngish millennial/oldish Gen-Zer grudgingly making an employer-mandated initial visit to Loyd’s cozy confines. Owing to her insensate colleagues’ smartphones, Jane has become internet infamous for a workplace meltdown related to her responsibilities as a disturbing type of customer care specialist for a Bay Area company. Succinctly stated, to resume her position, Jane needs Loyd’s approval.

From the outset, that becomes an uphill battle. Nullifying the serene color palette of Loyd’s office (all-too-comfortingly designed by Scott Penner), the characters’ introduction to one another, as well as to the audience, is thoroughly fraught. To be sure, that’s putting it mildly (this review contains many hints but no explicit spoilers). Soon, though, Loyd and Jane settle into an at least outwardly constructive therapeutic relationship, which, especially for those new to the play, requires a charitable suspension of disbelief, since even a psychologist with the caring temperament of Mr. Rogers probably would have been out the door at the earliest chance due to Jane’s freshly problematic behavior. That being noted, while Loyd’s belatedly expressed personal reason for staying in the room is completely unpersuasive, at worst, this writerly lapse quickly turns into a forgivable flaw thanks to Friedman’s affable performance, as well as Friedlich’s ability to stoke our curiosity in Jane who is a mystery that, unbeknownst to Loyd, perilously intensifies the more he attempts to reach her.

Like the audience, Loyd is reassured into thinking the danger has passed, largely because, aside from that intense opening encounter, Jane’s diagnosis appears fairly simple. Obnoxiously sarcastic with an OK-boomer chip on her shoulder, she’s in dire need of historical perspective about society’s problems and significantly better impulse control. But, as it turns out, the conflict between Loyd and Jane is far more than just intergenerational; it’s a desperate struggle for survival, with only one of them recognizing that the implications of their verbal jousting are life and death.

There’s a lot of Hitchcockian paranoia in Job as Jane pontificates about our shifting modern reality, in which Silicon Valley blithely continues to digitally replace everyone’s corporeal selves, leading to the prospect that we can now all see –and hurt–each other. Loyd, a good shrink (or so we’re led to think), tries to refocus Jane away from her obsessions and trauma, but it’s extremely difficult to separate someone from her pain, if it’s all that person knows. Without an identity other than whatever a bunch of unbeholden tech billionaires have made searchable online, Jane has little choice but to latch onto the cold comfort that, in our anxiety-riddled new world, she’s at least professionally important.

Just as with much of Hitchcock, it isn’t Jane’s fears that are necessarily irrational but, rather, what they cause her to believe and do. She is caught in a Vertigo-like psychic spiral that the remarkably subdued Lemmon brilliantly spins into a final, harrowing monologue that hastens Friedlich’s ambiguous ending, a Chekhov-defying standoff that makes a biblical pronunciation of the play’s title justifiable. Of course, whose faith is being tested and in what kind of higher power are also open questions in Job, as is the hope that anyone’s listening.

Lastly, on the subject of belief, it would be wonderful if, for a future remounting of the play, Friedlich could find a bit more in his actors. That’s vital, because director Michael Herwitz, operating with Friedlich’s production-note permission, continues to undermine Job, awkwardly shoehorning “artistry” into the play’s brief run time to depict Jane’s deteriorating mental state. Herwitz’s hackneyed use of lighting and sound effects (the former designed by Mextly Couzin and the latter by Cody Spencer) is of no benefit to Lemmon, as this combo of diminishing returns only serves to periodically intrude on what the talented actor is able to emotionally convey solely from Friedlich’s words. Frustratingly, the young playwright still has to figure out whom to creatively trust.

Job (through extended October 29, 2024)

The Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-541-4516 or visit http://www.2st.com

Running time: one hour and 20 minutes without an intermission