JOB
by Max Wolf Freidlich
Directed by Michael Herwitz
Closed but of note
Webpage at Soho Playhouse Site
Reviewed by David Spencer
I don’t really want to say that much about Job, because to say too much is to enter the Land of Spoilers. Because Job is a fooler. And though its initial Soho Playhouse run is over, I fully expect a remount. Soon. And more, which I’ll get to…
Ostensibly, it’s a one on-one encounter between a young woman who had a full-metal meltdown at her office job (Sydney Lemmon), and the psychologist to whom she is sent by her employer for evaluation (Peter Friedman).
And for a long time, it seems just that straightforward. Well, save for the fact that as it starts out, she’s holding a gun on him, and the first phase of the session involves whether he and she can come to a rapport in which she will put the gun away. But unbeknownst to us, in the first rate dialogue between two uniquely crafted characters, playwright Max Wolf Friedlich is laying out plot points as surely as if Job were a comedy-mystery-thriller like Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth. And in a certain sense, it is.
In a manner that is only occurring to me now, Job follows the tradition of Sleuth in another way, too. It dramatizes a seesaw encounter between an old pro and a relative newcomer—both in the substance of the play and in the delivery of the players—and the balance, as overseen by director Michael Herwitz could not be more delicate or finely calibrated.
The set is necessarily modest, but the punctuating sound effects evoking states of mind and unresolved crises (sound design by Jesse Char & Maxwell Neely Cohen), provide sufficiently bracing “filling out”—a kind of mental visual.
The only thing I’ll add is this: Job may well be one of those inspired bits of dramaturgy that suddenly finds, after its debut run ends—and I expect this one may transfer or be remounted in the near future—that makes a killing, you should pardon the expression (and no, that’s not a spoiler) regionally and in the boonies for many years; it has all the seesaw and thrill of the aforementioned Sleuth with none of the production requirements. Two actors, two chairs and a functional audio-playback system of some kind.
But it leaves its audience very full. And a little bit shaken.