Cast of Broadway Thriller ‘Job’ on Exploring Social Media’s Dark Side: ‘The Theater Just Rocks’

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor Peter Friedman, the star of “Job,” takes his time getting to the theater each day. Sometimes he’ll board a local train from his home on the Upper West Side instead of the express that gets him there faster.

Often, he’ll stop at a coffee shop and sit for a while, decompressing, before he ever opens the stage door. “I just like to put more space between me and it,” Friedman says. “There’s a little bit of dread you feel as it gets closer, but once the lights go up and you’re in it, then you’re off.” It’s understandable why Friedman needs to psych himself up before the curtain rises. “Job,” which transferred to Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre this month after acclaimed runs at the SoHo Playhouse and the Connelly Theater, is a fleet 80 minutes — but Friedman and his co-star, Sydney Lemmon, spend every one of them locked in a steely test of wills.

Friedman plays Loyd, a hippie therapist, and Lemmon is Jane, a content moderator at a tech company, who’s tasked with scrolling through all that’s hateful and sordid online (a basket of deplorables that includes everything from bestiality and pedophilia to torture porn).

Jane has been put on leave after a video of her having a breakdown went viral. She’s also desperate to return, if only Loyd will write a note giving her the all clear. “The theater just rocks,” says Lemmon. “It can get boisterous, and you hear people really laughing and nodding along.