But “Job” is a very provocative and genuinely disrupting 85 minutes with acute observational powers; you won’t be bored for a millisecond. And in an era of ascendant moralizing in plays and musicals, its cynicism is refreshing.
JOB
Opening Night: July 30, 2024
Theater: Helen Hayes Theatre
Website: jobtheplay.com
After being placed on leave following a viral workplace incident, Jane would do anything to return to her Big Tech job. But as the therapist who needs to authorize it, Loyd suspects her work might be doing more harm than good.
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July 30, 2024
Genre variety is healthy for Broadway and thrillers don’t come around often. If you don’t mind that the thrill is pointless, this one’s for you. Otherwise, you may need some therapy when it’s over.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
Beyond all its roiling debate about the perspectives of boomers vs. millennials, tech-averse vs. tech-addicted, which director Michael Herwitz keeps at an aptly tight and tense pace, the show engages in a less obvious (and more interesting) debate about self-interest. Even a job as seemingly sacrificial as Jane’s is revealed to be a vie for power.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
For all the effective stagecraft on display, however, Job (even the title, which many people will assume refers to the Old Testament book, is deliberately confusing) mainly smacks of gimmickry. It’s a psychological thriller that relies too heavily on cheap thrills.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
Whether or not the audience will be up to the challenge is a larger question. While the tension remains when the gun goes away, the show slowly oozes out information like an IV drip. At times, the show’s desire to remain obtuse gets in its own way. But, unlike its other less-successful, black-mirroresque peers, I promise Job’s final rattling, supreme reveal is worth it.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
I’m not quite sure if the fact the story is mediated through tech makes it as new and shocking as it may seem. Maybe there’s an analog to Jane’s crusading—so chicly nihilistic it swings around to being rather traditionalist—in something like the reactionary right-wing of tech, or Dimes Square Catholicism (very hot right now, very J.D. Vance!). But instead of untangling all that, in its final moments, Job just cuts its knots open and leaves you with sleek, unsettling uncertainty.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
That’s a far cry from how Herwitz’s production felt at the much smaller Connolly Theatre and Soho Playhouse, where the closer proximity of audience to actor made you feel like you were in Loyd’s office, too. When Lemmon held up that gun downtown, it was extremely confronting. We were in her crosshairs, complicit in the atrocities that she’s avenging. At the Hayes, there’s a clear division between stage and spectator. On Broadway, Job just feels like work.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
Somehow, it lands most of the tricks, including a turn toward the pitch-black in the final act, which ends just before it runs this tight battle of wills and expertise off the rails. Job smartly knows when to log off; there may be no grand messages (and thank God), but this is one of the more insightful internet spirals.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
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.
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July 30, 2024
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.
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July 30, 2024
That goal is the play’s big ah-ha moment, and as plot twists goes, it crumbles at a moment’s reflection.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
“Job” is, at the same time, a scathing and often funny critique of the social and economic forces that have polarized us in recent years. As I noted in my review of the earlier production, Mr. Friedlich raises astute and disturbing questions about how both of his characters may have exploited or been exploited by the modern world.
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July 30, 2024
On Broadway, the production (as directed by Michael Herwitz) looks empty and the play feels underwritten. It dumps compelling societal concerns upon us, leaves them unexplored, and relies structurally on an uninspired starting point (i.e. confessing to a therapist) and gimmicks.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 30, 2024
Though superbly acted and unrelentingly tense under Michael Herwitz’s direction, that conversation reveals little food for long-term thought beneath its slick veneer.
READ THE REVIEWJuly 31, 2024
The root appeal of Job remains its embrace of Jane’s unstable energy, at once fearful and fearless, self-deluding and laced with truths. Beyond the macabre details of the dark web, what she imparts is a quivering mood of unsustainable discontent that is worth heeding.
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July 31, 2024
In the uneven but thoroughly intense play, both performances are riveting in very different registers; Lemmon’s Jane is both sharp and fractured, a coiled spring of acid all-knowingness, whose fury means we, like Loyd, fear what she is capable of.