If you’re paying attention, you’ll realise that there’s something rather apt about the layers of juxtapositions that come together in the Australian debut of Job, an incisive new psychological thriller brought to the Melbourne stage by Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre. 

In this sharply troubling two-hander, Loyd (Darren Gilshenan) – a middle-aged psychologist with a penchant for DIY glass-blown jewellery – is the only thing standing between Jane (Jessica Clarke) and the one thing she really wants. After her very public meltdown becomes the subject of a viral video, Jane is placed on leave from her high-pressure job at a big tech company. She is desperate to get back to her desk, but Loyd isn’t so convinced that’s what she needs. Jane seems to think that violence might be the answer. Whatever the outcome, this heated session will entirely alter the outcome of both of their lives.

Black Mirror, eat your heart out. The foreboding meta-commentary of this production could compete with the quality of the complex modern dramas that cleaned up at this year’s Emmy Awards.

Darren Gilshennan and Jessica Clarke in Job. Photo © Sarah Walker

Steered by multi-award-winning director Nadia Tass, the complexity, nuance and nowness of the one-act script marries with strong performances and a compelling onstage dynamic. The action makes an explosive start, and the tension lingers throughout the entirety of the play’s suspenseful 75-minute runtime, ever-present, as if the air could be cut with a knife or a life taken by a trigger-happy slip of the finger. 

Despite this, both protagonists gradually become disarmed by the small moments of connection they find within each other, while the gun never escapes Jane’s possession. There are even somewhat charming interludes between the hysterics, where they stumble upon glimpses of raw humanity, micro-interactions that sprout from amidst the awkward procedure of a corporate-mandated psych evaluation and the generational divides that can create a chasm of difference between a professional older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a deeply vulnerable younger woman with an anxiety streak that runs as high as her IQ. 

There’s a cumbersome exchange about the reclamation of the word “queer”. Jane attempts to swat away Loyd’s well-trodden counselling style with dismissive retorts that sound as if they’ve been gleaned from surface-level snippets of pop-psychology from social media. Occasionally, the lights flicker, and we collectively slip into moments of algorithmically-enabled psychosis – and damn, Daniel, it does take some real fine-tuning to translate memes and online in-jokes for the stage and do it well. Snaps to the team.

Darren Gilshennan  in Job. Photo © Sarah Walker

Penned by New York City based playwright Max Wolf Friedlich, Job made its Broadway debut in 2024 following two successful off-Broadway runs. The freshness of the script is evident, with contextual clues that confirm that this story absolutely is set in the present day. Loyd compassionately acknowledges why, in this day and age, a woman would have good reason to hesitate about sharing details of her personal reproductive health history (i.e. a quiet abortion during college), even (and especially) with a health provider. 

This script captures a moment, pregnant with the fear of the United States’ apparent downward spiral into a Handmaid’s Tale-style dystopia in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade – with the epidemic of emptiness fed by the false promises of late-stage capitalism; with the palpable outrage of a woman who was promised that higher education would hand her the keys to a liberated future, only to find herself deeply unhappy, desperately lonely, coerced into a state of dependence on a job that is eating away at her sanity, willing to fall into bed with a sub-par former lover just to feel something, and fixated on the idea of leaving the world a slightly better place than what she has uncovered on the depraved underbelly of the internet, at all costs.

The drama is infected with the ricochet residue of a society made up of ever more lonely people, in a hyper-connected world.

Jessica Clarke in Job. Photo © Sarah Walker

Inside the walls of the Red Stitch’s humble 80-seat space, the old-fashioned immediacy and intimacy of indie theatre is harnessed to get to the root of a story that speaks directly to the most frightening concerns of the post-global era in which we find ourselves. As the omnipresence of technology leaves so many humans feeling increasingly isolated in an ironically interconnected world – and that overused adage of techno-skepticism refuses to lose relevance – audiences can take communion with this gem of a production. As our protagonists wrestle their way into having an unfiltered interpersonal interaction, perhaps we can also be reminded of our own humanity. 

Deliciously existential, this play will leave you with a litany of conversation starters. See it before it gets censored. 

Job plays at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, St Kilda East, until 13 October.