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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Job Also see Richard's review of Tenn
Partly because every day Facebook and Instagram and YouTube begins to look more and more like a Sears catalog of emotions and experiences you'd like to have for yourself. But there's also a darker side you almost never see: Job is about the people who have to clean it all up, so you can mindlessly scroll to your heart's content, trying on each new experience like something from a rack of clothes. But in this case, a psychiatrist (hired by a social media corporation) must try to resolve a hellacious mess, just to keep it all going. And I have to dance around a lot of the details of this particular story, so I hope you'll be patient. A friend of mine's an historian, so if I ever say anything clever about history, it probably came out of his mouth first. But he posts his essays on Facebook and wonders why more people don't ever see his writing on Hitler or Stalin, or even on the saintly martyred figures of our own modern day. But what happens if you sit down and type out the worst words that regularly describe any consequential human event from any given century? Social media will kick you down into your own private dungeon of social neglect, through the use of an algorithm that simply refuses to share your stories, along with those of all the other historians, I suppose. The clean-up process is, shall we say, a bit sloppy. In Job it's the other side of all this that gets exposed: we're reminded that private pogroms and hidden holocausts are happening all around us, all the time. But the advertisers on social media don't want to appear anywhere near that kind of thing. So your feed gets prettied up, because there's a lot of money riding on just keeping your eyes glued to a screen all the time. And the people who know the truth must toil in an ever-increasing solitude. The play began its life in 2023, Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse, and then reappeared at the Connelly Theatre before a limited run on Broadway at the Helen Hayes in 2024. On stage, it starts out with a wildly destructive moment, as a mad young woman threatens the life of an older gentleman. Her immediate crisis plays out like a "reel," an ever-repeating video, over and over. But the characters and their themes grow quickly and organically, and even their silences and visual imagery add greatly under the mille-feuille direction of Ms. Pileggi. She's constantly setting up meaningful new visuals before us, even with just two people on stage, and each physical phrasing puts a new twist into the story. The two characters are Loyd and Jane, played by an outstanding pair of actors, John Contini and Kristen Lindvedt. Jane has recently had a highly Instagrammable moment, the kind you never want to have, and her soul has been stolen as surely as yours or mine, as participants in social media ourselves. But Jane wants to go back to work, for reasons that seem compulsive and destructive. There's a slew of wispy, graciously crafted, intellectual jokes sprinkled throughout the story, and the audience laughs with pronounced relief at the first humorous twist, five or ten minutes after the opening stand-off. A deeply personal conundrum over an abortion is left elegantly unresolved. And the tale of an Indian-born college student in the early going takes on a terrible secondary meaning much later. There's also a wry stand-up routine for Ms. Lindvedt about life in Los Angeles that deescalates another tense segment, though the L.A.-bashing seems (structurally) a bit rote. And the final ten minutes abruptly change the entire direction of the play, putting everything into a horrifying perspective, and the pair's whole relationship into an inexplicable new superposition. But it's amazing what you can do with a fabulous director and two amazing performers. I love the high level of immediacy, and all the fast-paced, artful fumbling for what comes next. The beautiful set is by C. Otis Sweezy, with painting by Cameron Tesson (there's a magnificent impressionistic mural of the San Francisco skyline upstage) and the fine costumes are by Michele Friedman Siler. There's also a lot of physical clashing, choreographed by John Wilson, shockingly well integrated into all the highly naturalistic dialog. Kareem Deanes' sound design and Michael Sullivan's lighting effects create lots of insane "screen-shot" moments throughout. They never stop the intense pace or emotion, but show us how crazy we may look to the outside world, which invariably trivializes everything that passes for the great human procession. The nightmarish sound and the weird pulsing light elements, which become somewhat more understandable late in the game, are beautifully sprinkled into the story by board operator Sabria Bender. In real life, we still don't know how it will all turn out, nor do the characters here. But the world of theatre both reflects and shines a path. And here we have a grim heroine and a reluctant therapist who manage to do both. Their passionate desire to fix all the modern monsters that may be trying to destroy us ultimately gives us hope. Job, produced by the New Jewish Theatre, runs through August 23, 2026, at the Jewish Community Center, #2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.newjewishtheatre.org. Cast: Production Staff: Additional Production Staff: Theatre Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
