Most working professionals believe they’re good at their jobs. That’s also true of Loyd and Jane, the two characters who face off in Max Wolf Friedlich’s edgy play “JOB,” which opened Saturday in an engrossing, edge-of-the-seat production at Cygnet Theatre.
Loyd is a therapist who feels called to help deeply troubled patients who have given up hope. But Jane’s faith in her job suitability verges on Messianic. Despite her panic attacks, Xanax abuse and obsessive behavior, Jane is convinced she was put on this Earth to carry the burden of the world’s darkness. And Loyd is the only thing standing in her way.
Friedlich’s 80-minute psychological thriller starts with a bang and careens wildly through multiple twists and turns. Then its shocking final minutes will leave you not only breathless, but torn over which (if any) character to root for.
In her strongest San Diego directorial effort to date, Hannah Meade creates a fiery, whiplash-worthy experience that’s intimately told in the round in the Dottie Studio Theater at The Joan.
Jacob Bruce, left, and Caroline Gottlieb in Cygnet Theatre’s “JOB.” (Karli Cadel)
“JOB” is prophetically set in the Bay area in January 2020, just two months before COVID-19 would shut the world down and phone and social media use would skyrocket.
Jane had been working as a content moderator, flagging violent online videos for a Google-like tech company. But after suffering an on-the-job meltdown that was captured in a viral video, she has been on company-ordered paid leave.
Jane, who is in her late 20s, desperately wants her job back, but first she must prove to Loyd, a 60something company-ordered therapist, that she’s fit to return. Yet from the moment the play begins, it’s stunningly clear that the profoundly broken Jane has failed to make a good first impression.
Caroline Gottlieb gives an outstanding performance as Jane. Her razor-edge voice crackles with tension and her body is tightly coiled with pent-up ferocity, yet there’s pain, vulnerability and earnestness underneath.
And as Loyd, Jacob Bruce is cool and authentic as the seemingly gentle, soft-spoken ex-Hippie, who not-so-secretly resents the in-your-face, phone-obsessed manner of Jane and her Gen Z peers.
As the session begins and the two actors warily circle each other on scenic designer Audrey Casteris’ upscale therapy office set, the play’s dialogue hopcotches through topics of personal history, loneliness, the perils of living online, generational differences, mental health, workplace culture and global warming.
Mostly, Jane is lucid and focused in conversation, but sometimes Loyd’s words or phrases trigger her into sudden psychological breaks punctuated by warped bursts of noise created by sound designer Steven Leffue and quivering moments of lighting by Annelise Schultz-Salazar.
Are these psychotic breaks that Jane experiences hallucinations? Are they divine visions? Or are they suppressed memories? And who is really in danger if Loyd signs off on allowing Jane to return to her work saving the world from the most violent filth on the internet?
“JOB” doesn’t offer easy answers. But it’s fascinating to think about.
‘JOB’
When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 1.
Where: Dottie Studio Theater at Cygnet Theatre’s The Joan, 2880 Roosevelt St., San Diego
Tickets: $59 and up
Online: cygnettheatre.org