Signature’s ‘JOB’ is a Probing Paranoid Thriller
Signature's taut thriller "JOB" opens with a bang, dips a bit in the middle, but finishes strong with a gripping climax.
Max Wolf Friedlich’s probing paranoid thriller JOB wastes no time dropping its audience into a harrowing standoff already in progress. Inside a seemingly warm, cozy office, Jane, a young woman in jeans and a hoodie, portrayed with riveting intensity by Jordan Slattery, aims a gun at Loyd, a slightly older, unarmed man (Eric Hissom), who can only try to persuade her not to do what she appears intended to do.
Of course, it’s the old “you might be wondering how we got here” gotcha, and it’s effective here. The audience will have to wait to see if Loyd’s persuasive powers can outrace Jane’s trigger finger. First, Friedlich takes us back, not to the beginning, but to some point before, inside this office, when this life-or-death scenario would have seemed inconceivable, at least to Loyd.
So the suspense is built-in, as he and Jane engage and parry in the time-honored duel between patient and therapist, their little dance working its way towards the fateful moment when a gun enters the picture.
For the most part, director Matthew Gardiner and his cast keep that suspense wound tight around the simple back-and-forth of these two people talking. Their sessions, like the play, are compact in form, yet far-ranging in the topical and emotional ground they cover. Loyd’s homey office feels too small to contain all the anguish Jane struggles to express, or the potential eruption as her trauma bubbles to the surface.
To that end, Luciana Stecconi’s well-appointed set, spacious in a real-life sense, registers as suitably claustrophobic. Somehow it feels as if we’re all inside that office waiting for something to blow. And despite all the effort we can assume Loyd put into creating this soothing, safe space, or to make himself, in his boho bracelets and relaxed “dad” sweater, seem friendly and approachable, we have the foreknowledge that his safety and comfort are exceedingly fragile.
Danger awaits inside this Bay Area office, or, rather, she walks in the door looking fairly innocent. Slattery, without actorly fuss, conveys the raging storm swirling inside quiet-looking Jane, whom we learn was required to seek therapy following a very public meltdown at her job. “I can’t be outside,” she says.
She worked in moderating internet content, a grueling task physically, mentally, and emotionally, where she found herself exposed, not only to cat videos and gender reveals, but to the absolute worst of what people post online — “evil” people, according to Jane. It affected her psyche, and those effects continue to seep into her life uncontrollably.
At stray moments, she’ll zone out into a daze, haunted by the things she’s seen. Her horrors are suggested in Snapchat-style soundbites, delineated through Kenny Neal’s evocative sound design, and Colin K. Bills’ shrewd lighting. Jane also tells Loyd in detail about some of the most vile content she came across, with those stories taking on a kind of true-crime intrigue.
Yet, it’s all second-hand — Friedlich doesn’t dramatize Jane’s past experiences but scrutinizes her work trauma, her childhood, her relationships in hindsight, which, in Jane’s case, is not 20/20 vision. As she pores over her past, thoughtfully prompted by Loyd, their sessions hit a point of feeling repetitious, or that we’re wandering aimlessly in the weeds of examining everything wrong with the internet and society, in addition to probing the adversity in Jane’s life that led her here.
Then, really just in time, the play takes a turn and we’re locked in again to the hair-trigger tension roiling inside that office. Slattery holds us in thrall until the very last second, delivering a powerful conclusion.
JOB (★★★☆☆) runs through March 16 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave. in Arlington, Va. There is a Pride Night performance on Feb. 21 and a Discussion Night performance on March 12. Tickets are $76. Call 703-820-9771, or visit www.sigtheatre.org.
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