Job
Overall Grade: C-
If Job had opened on Broadway under quieter circumstances, it might have slipped under the radar—a provocative, 80-minute chamber play about trauma, therapy, and content moderation. But when Peter Friedman—fresh off his iconic turn as Frank Vernon in Succession—took the lead role of Loyd, a weary, seasoned therapist, the production suddenly had a spotlight. Opposite him is Sydney Lemmon (Fear the Walking Dead, Succession, Helstrom), portraying Jane, a young woman whose high-stakes session takes us on a claustrophobic emotional rollercoaster.
Written by Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Michael Herwitz, Job premiered Off-Broadway in 2023 before transferring to Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater in 2024, earning critical acclaim and a Critic’s Pick designation from The New York Times. It was also nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play.
The Premise: Intriguing and Loaded
Set in a single therapy session in the Bay Area circa 2020, the play opens with an offbeat but seemingly routine meeting between therapist and patient. But things escalate rapidly when Jane—clearly on edge—pulls a gun. The calm is shattered. Loyd, clearly experienced, manages the situation like a professional: delaying, defusing, and dodging while trying to get help or reason with her.
The premise immediately invites curiosity: Jane has been placed on leave from her job at a major tech company and requires Loyd’s sign-off to return. But why would someone need a therapist’s approval to go back to work?
As the session unravels, the disturbing truth surfaces: Jane works in content moderation, the digital frontlines of humanity’s worst impulses. Graphic violence. Abuse. Child exploitation. She absorbed it all, until she cracked—on camera. The clip went viral. Now she sits here, half-defensive, half-determined, clinging to her identity as a digital “hero.” But her sense of justice turns obsessive, and her fixation begins to circle back to Loyd himself. The final twist? Jane believes he is one of the predators whose content she was forced to review.
Highlights & Lowlights
Peter Friedman is excellent. He brings gravity, nuance, and naturalistic calm to a role that could easily skew melodramatic. His every glance and pause feels lived-in. And the clever staging—like when Jane shows him the infamous video of her breakdown, which we never see, but only hear as we watch him react—offers haunting realism.
However, Sydney Lemmon’s Jane is uneven. Whether by direction or performance choices, her movement often feels overly staged: awkwardly dragging furniture, contorting into strange positions, neurotic to the point of distraction. Her emotional arc at times lacks clarity, and the blocking—paired with disjointed lighting and jarring sound design—adds to a sense of fragmentation that doesn’t serve the text.
Final Scene: High Stakes, Ambiguous Impact
As the play closes, Jane confronts Loyd with a harrowing choice: he can sign her release, validate her return to the virtual trenches, and allow her to continue her “good work”… or she can deliver justice the old-fashioned way. The lights cut out.
The subject matter is chilling, timely, and rich with thematic potential. But the execution stumbles—just enough to dull the knife. While Job captures the horror of invisible labor and the psychological toll of online atrocity, its theatrical devices occasionally feel more performative than purposeful.
Final Thoughts
Job is like a wreck on the highway: you don’t want to look, but you can’t look away. The content is disturbing. The tension is real. And Peter Friedman is a rock. But the rest—the blocking, the soundscape, the tonal inconsistencies—left me detached. The ideas are there, but the theatrical architecture doesn’t always support them.
A haunting premise with flawed staging—earning it, in my book, a C-.