With out spoiling something, “The Work” is Max Wolf Friedlich’s heady synapse, starring a stressed-out younger girl at gunpoint. Therapist within the workplace. That is how the enjoyable begins.
It is a unusual, if not downright delusional, manner for Jane (Sidney Lemon), who’s receiving corporate-mandated psychological well being advantages from Lloyd (Peter Friedman) Signal, which might enable her to return to work after struggling a nervous breakdown at work. Video of her meltdown went viral, turning her meltdown right into a meme.
However this was not the remedy Jane was in search of. Far-off. Over the following 80 minutes, this tense transmission from Off-Broadway reveals a terrifying journey into the darkish facet of the web.
As soon as the gun was again in her bag, one other confrontation started. Jane is a Gen Z technologist who is decided to return to her job as a “content material moderation” to take away offensive content material from the Bay Space tech large’s platform.
For a lot of the present, the drama appears to be a tense tug-of-war between a distraught worker and a troubled therapist who is definite to not comply with her calls for, However instinctively really feel the necessity to assist the soul of a troubled and conflicted particular person to carry on to “this isn’t me.”
Lloyd prides himself on taking over difficult instances, and as he parses Jane’s previous, he rigorously makes an attempt to get to the basis of Jane’s ache and panic assaults. He got here to grasp her household and private historical past, her empowerment points at work, and her obsession with and publicity to the violence she witnessed on the earth and on-line.
Jane counters Lloyd’s counseling periods with a cynical worldview and a generational indictment. But regardless of this, she longed for a secure place to lie down, ideally “in an emergency room the place there have been no choices.”
Her preliminary anger appeared to be directed on the “child boomers,” whom Loyd represented, and whom she dismissed. However her anger was extra particular than a basic accusation. She has a job to do – and right here, too, that is sensible and is overwhelming.
Friedman introduced the identical cool, imprecise professionalism to his function as company govt Frank Vernon on HBO’s “Succession.” In a superb efficiency, the actor makes Loyd’s delicate and funky character a pure outgrowth of his long-ago Berkeley hippie days. However he is additionally conscious of the excessive stakes. “Please notice what is going on on right here,” he reminded Jane when she requested for a medical go. “You take me hostage.”
Lemmon is riveting and brings an mental ferocity to her function. Generally she is manic and simply frightened; at different instances she stays immobile and enters one other aircraft of actuality, solely to be pushed again by responsibility to her most necessary job – a job during which she feels the ability of the community. “Extract the ability of darkness” and “carry it with you.”
Whereas it is a nice and purposeful mission (“I’ve a job to do. This isn’t an possibility”), on this specific case, it has no clear path ahead.
The present’s title is in all caps, presumably due to the significance of Jane’s duties on the firm and the biblical sacrifices she endured. (“It is a privilege to undergo,” she stated). But the present typically seems like an overload of concepts, themes, and ethical dilemmas scattered in random bursts and bytes. Generally, “JOB” virtually loses contact with actuality.
However then the present takes an surprising new path, upending the psychological thriller narrative as two characters all of a sudden emerge from utterly totally different views. As additional depths of the online are revealed, it turns right into a horror story.
Cody Spencer’s unsettling sound design, Mextly Cousin’s lighting seize, and set designer Scott Penner’s towering display designed workplace island, all of which straight subconsciously provides to the strain of the manufacturing and was rigorously calibrated by director Michael Herwitz.
This single-episode, two-actor exploration of the surprising new actuality of “the web we dwell in” might play out on many extra levels to come back. However these trying ahead to a suspenseful workplace showdown or know-how debate ought to buckle up and put together for cyber hell.
