Broadway’s hit thriller. Now extended through Oct 27.
Following two extended, sold-out downtown engagements, Max Wolf Friedlich’s play Job is now this summer’s “chic, relentless Broadway thriller. Job is extremely effective, often funny, with excellent performances.” – The New York Times
After being placed on leave following a viral incident, Jane would do anything to return to her Big Tech–company job. But as the therapist who needs to authorize it, Loyd suspects her work might be doing more harm than good.
Starring Tony Award® nominee Peter Friedman (Ragtime, “Succession”) and Sydney Lemmon (Tár, “Fear the Walking Dead”), “Job is very provocative, stimulating, and daring—you won’t be bored for a millisecond” (Chicago Tribune). Don’t miss this “electrifying” (Variety), on Broadway through October 27 only.
It’s muscle-tensing and entertaining, particularly in the play’s middle stretch, to watch a meeting of two differently melted minds. And satisfying when Loyd pokes at Jane’s hypocrisies and delusions, her conviction that she’s nothing and also an online martyr – “It’s a privilege to suffer as much as I do,” she says. Still, Friedlich’s line-by-line writing is shrewd enough to convey Jane’s internal hell of self-reflective mirrors, her spiral of judgment to nowhere. Job is, for the most part, a tonal highwire act that wisely keeps to a taut 80 minutes. Or perhaps the more accurate metaphor is trapeze – swinging wildly between farce, zeitgeist-y drama and thriller. 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.
The first time I saw the play, crammed like a sardine right up near the performers at the SoHo Playhouse, the final moments left me with a sickly feeling like the space had filled with poison gas. I’m all for feel-bad theater, but if it’s not precisely concocted, you quickly develop an immunity. A few days after seeing Job then, the poison had passed through me, and I found myself not thinking much about the drama at all. Seeing Job again on Broadway, I didn’t experience the same queasiness when the twist arrived. Maybe the experience suffered because I didn’t have the same physical proximity to the performers. But I also sensed that the play, like a particular kind of internet edgelord, was throwing out shock value to protect itself from having to dig deeper.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Return Engagement Off-Broadway |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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