Theater: “Job” at the Helen Hayes Theatre
Psychiatrists and mental health professionals don’t have it easy. Every day, they have to deal with a variety of patients facing all sorts of problems. But there may be nothing more disconcerting than meeting a patient for the first time who draws a gun on you.
That’s the opening gambit for Max Wolf Friedlich’s “Job,” a chic two-hander at the Helen Hayes Theater.
Jane (Sydney Lemmon), a tightly wound twenty-something Bay Area professional working in Big Tech, has been temporarily suspended from her job. Apparently, she suffered a nervous breakdown at the office, climbing on a desk, and screaming at her coworkers. Someone snapped a video that was leaked to social media and that subsequently went viral. Before Jane can be reinstated, she needs a letter of clearance from sixty-something Dr. Loyd (Peter Friedman).
It soon becomes clear—as soon as she pulls out the gun, in fact—that Jane isn’t playing with a full deck. Over the next 80 minutes, she displays symptoms of paranoia, post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and narcissism. Trying to do his job, Dr. Loyd carefully probes Jane about events from her personal life that may have triggered the breakdown. Antagonistic from the get-go, and angry that she even has to be there, she responds with rude questions of her own, putting the somewhat bewildered doctor on the defensive.
The interplay between the two is very funny at times—occasionally touching on the differences between OK Boomers and Gen-Zers—until Jane reveals a secret that turns the conversation and the play very dark.
The cast is first-rate. Friedman is a journeyman NYC actor who’s seen in theater and television, including most recently in “Succession” as a long time confidante of Logan Roy at Waystar. Sydney Lemmon (the granddaughter of actor Jack Lemmon) more than holds her own against Friedman and gives a performance that just may define “psycho” for generations.
Now the important question: Did I actually like “Job?” I would say I respected it more than liked it. The play on the whole is a bit contrived as well as disturbing, and the ending is deliberately ambiguous which I’m sure was meant to spur post-performance conversation. And that it did.
Like this review? Follow me at “What Does Aug Think?” at acsntn.substack.com. Thank you!