Theatre in Review: Job (Soho Playhouse)

	Peter Friedman, Sydney Lemmon. Photo: Emilio Madrid

The playwright Max Wolf Friedlich doesn't waste time; Job begins with Loyd, a therapist, at bay in his office, staring at a young woman holding a gun. It's an attention-getter, all right; the play ends with a twist that, whatever else you want to say about it, is a humdinger. Between these two moments, however, Job has all the allure of listening in on a total stranger's therapy session. It's talk, talk, talk, very little of it witty or insightful until the climactic bombshell arrives. As it happens, the gun-toting Jane is a soul in torment; she is also a pain in the ass.

At least initially, Friedlich mines the situation for black humor, when Loyd, deploying his best professional manner, says, "A boundary for me, that I'd maybe like to set...how would you feel about putting the gun back in your bag?" Jane, who has calmed down by this point, complies, adding, "I don't think you'll try to escape," pausing just long enough to send a shiver down Loyd's spine before copping to making a bad joke. In real life, 99 out of 100 in Loyd's position would be speed-dialing 911, but if there's to be a play, we have to go along with Job's artifice, hoping that it will lead somewhere.

Jane has been referred to Loyd by the HR department at her place of employment; it seems that she had an epic meltdown at work, an event that, unhappily, was captured on video and has gone viral. "I was a meme," she notes bitterly. "I was 'when you ask to speak to the manager but the person behind the counter is the manager'." Admittedly, Job is pretty on-target in describing our modern digital forms of humiliation: It's one thing to have a nervous breakdown in front of your colleagues: it's another to have your agony played for laughs worldwide.

Unsurprisingly, Loyd wants to know what triggered Jane's episode. Even more, he is curious as to why this obviously gifted and intelligent young woman is so eager, even desperate, to return to a position in "user care" at a Silicon Valley company. He finds out, of course, but not before we have endured an hour's worth of delaying tactics, which is where Job runs into trouble.

The script describes Jane as "self-aware to a fault," and she certainly does wield irony like a weapon, but her verbal fencing with Loyd -- a series of well-worn millennial-versus-boomer debates -- quickly becomes tedious. Boiling down a complex decade to a sour quip, she says, "The legacy of the '60s is an obsession with aesthetics. To be anti-war you had to wear a tie-dye shirt and grow your hair out and so now, today, I'm not allowed to have 'good politics' and wear Lululemon." Not that she has any use for her own generation; dismissing her college friends, she says, "They were allowed to be anyone, they could do anything, they didn't even have to be gay to shout about how 'queer' they were. I tricked myself into being like, OK I like drugs, I make out with girls at parties, I'm just like these people." After a few minutes of this, it's pretty clear why, even in extremis, she has no friends.

So much disaffection could make a girl grumpy. But it gradually becomes clear that Jane's breakdown has to do with the nature of her job, which has become a dangerous, self-destructive obsession. More to the point, she hasn't been entirely honest in seeking out Loyd. Indeed, Jane is a woman with a plan, and her method of seeking moral redress -- not to be revealed here -- is patently, almost laughably, unbelievable. It's also tasteless: In using certain techniques of the thriller format to explore one of the ugliest crimes that humanity can commit, Friedlich trivializes his intentions. Job intends to shock but ends up merely offensive, a brazenly manipulative shocker that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

Even at its most grating, however, Job remains watchable thanks to a pair of fine actors committed to bringing flashes of drama to their characters' dull psychological tango. Peter Friedman gives Loyd a wary, watchful quality, quietly probing the source of Jane's agony yet clapping back with gusto when her smug attitude becomes too much; he also listens intently, silently calculating his next move. As Jane, Sydney Lemmon is the patient of every therapist's nightmares, a mysterious, menacing presence shifting, without warning, from deadpan disdain to brief fugue states and bursts of tears. Making her Off-Broadway debut, Lemmon is already a controlled and canny technician. (She is also the granddaughter of Jack Lemmon, and this is probably the last time I'll need to write that because she is already a distinctive talent in her own right.)

Clearly, the director, Michael Herwitz, has a nice way with his cast. He also gets solid contributions from his designers, even when working in one of New York's least design-friendly playhouses. Scott Penner's wall-less set has an arena-like aspect, supported by Mextly Couzin's lighting, which shifts deftly between a basic white wash and sharp bursts of color that accent Jane's inner distress; in such moments, she is added by the expertly timed sound effects of Jessie Char and Maxwell Neely-Cohen. (They also provide solid reinforcement for the incidental music by Cautious Clay.) Michelle J. Li's costumes comment aptly on the differences between Loyd and Jane's walks of life.

But Job takes much too long to arrive at a revelation that doesn't justify what has come before. As it ends, you won't know for certain what comes next for Jane and Loyd, but not you're likely to care. --David Barbour