Job

Play (2023)
by Max Wolf Friedlich
Directed by Marianna Bassham
Speakeasy Stage Company
Boston Center for the Arts
South End, Boston
January 16 – February 7, 2026

With Josephine Moshiri Elwood (Jane), Dennis Trainor Jr. (Loyd)

Jane (Josephine Moshiri Elwood), an employee at a tech company in the present day, enters Loyd’s (Dennis Trainor Jr.) psychotherapy office in a state of urgency and panic (see spoilers section below for further details). Purportedly, Jane is seeking a letter from Loyd that will give her a pass from some aberrant behavior at work. What ensues is a long dialogue between Jane and Loyd under considerable tension and stress, in which Jane gradually rolls out her story and her general set of issues. Though Loyd makes desperate attempts to get through to Jane, he keeps running up against walls. Eventually, Jane’s whole story comes through (see spoilers section for more), confirming the stresses that the contemporary tech scene can impose upon those who work in its trenches.

This play moves along at a high pitch throughout its relatively short eighty minute tenure, driven by Jane’s freneticism, by Loyd’s incapacity as a therapist to do anything about it, and by one’s general ignorance about what has made Jane so aggressively angry. Indeed, the play offers suspense, and one wonders what Jane ultimately will do.

Some of the suspense derives from Loyd’s inability to do anything to calm Jane down, and indeed, at various points, he gets quite upset himself. Loyd’s reactions seem a bit extreme at times, not always conveying a reassuring sense of a balanced psychological guide, a bit of a drawback to the drama. Were Loyd, alternatively, measured and calm throughout, the raw tension of such a sober chilliness would seem a better dramatic alternative. Whether to have Loyd react emotionally and decompensate to some extent is a function of the script or the direction is not entirely clear. Whatever the source, Dennis Trainor Jr.’s Loyd comes across as an odd combination of measured and thoughtful elder psychologist, and, at times, unhinged. According to a psychiatrist friend of mine who had seen the play, this portrayal was not unrealistic, given the circumstances (described in the spoilers section below).

As Jane, Josephine Moshiri Elwood offers a continually fraught demeanor which offers a relentless unsettledness that indeed creates tension and drama and which drives towards its goal with a singular intensity. That relentlessness, somewhat exhausting and perhaps less interesting than a more nuanced portrayal might be, seems more a function of the script rather than the direction, but that is hard to tell.

Given these parameters of the script, both actors do a decent job of conveying the unbridled tension of the setup.

Indeed, the show creates an awareness of the vulnerabilities of those dealing with all of the bizarre darker corners of social media and the toll it takes on those who are exposed to them. I have known people who have actually performed these functions for high-tech companies and have described the psychological and emotional effects upon them. The play’s message is certainly important, but some of the ambiguities of the denouement (see below) perhaps make that message less clear than it might be.

In theory, the title of the play reflects the meaning of employment status, but its distinctive use as a single word title also suggests its association with the Biblical book of Job, about a man who suffers extreme trials as a challenge to his faith. Whether that meaning were considered by the playwright is not clear, and what its implication for this script might be is also ambiguous. Would Loyd be the Job of this signification, enduring an unknown trial from an unbalanced client, or would Jane be the Job who has had to undergo the trials of a highly taxing employment challenge? Or might they both be Job, challenged each in their own way? Hard to tell if that were the playwright’s intention, but certainly suggested by the title.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)