When producer-dramaturg Hannah Getts known as Sydney Lemmon early on a Monday morning, the actor was awoken from a four-and-half-hour slumber. She had simply wrapped an indie movie the evening earlier than, and the shoot ran till 4 o’clock within the morning. However the excellent news could not wait. Following two prolonged sold-out engagements, Max Wolf Friedlich’s psychological thriller Job, through which Lemmon stars, received a much-deserved promotion. It was shifting to Broadway. “When she advised me the information, it blew my thoughts,” Lemmon tells me from her New York condo. The actor was going again to the place her profession started.
Job is a tense two-hander about an overworked and overstimulated younger lady named Jane (Lemmon) who’s pressured to take a go away of absence from her huge Bay Space tech job following a really public meltdown at work. With a purpose to return, she should get the approval of her middle-aged therapist Loyd (Peter Friedman), who suspects her job as an internet content material moderator, the place she navigates the darkish internet, could also be inflicting extra hurt than good. Over an intense session collectively, the 2 discover concepts round household, battle, social justice, and trauma in a cyber age.
“I learn the script and felt if I had the chance to play this function, I’d be extraordinarily fortunate and actually have my work minimize out for myself,” Lemmon says. She had been eager to get again to theater for some time, auditioning for various roles, however nothing was aligning for her. “With this one, every part simply related,” she says. “I used to be shocked and so happy and so grateful.”
The present started its first run at SoHo Playhouse final September and rapidly bought out. A return engagement adopted at Connelly Theater this January earlier than touchdown at its present dwelling, the Hayes Theater, final month.
For Lemmon, all of the coaching and dreaming was for roles like Job‘s Jane. “The character is so sophisticated. She’s so confident, however she’s so fearful,” she says. “She has rather a lot happening, and it felt like I used to be by no means going to have the ability to determine all of it out. Even now, after greater than 200 performances, I nonetheless really feel like I am attempting to crack her. That’s all you may hope for when taking over a task.”
Over an exhilarating 80-minute stress check, Lemmon and Friedman (Succession) ship a incredible tennis match of dialogue that has been described by critics as “breathless” and “a taut tug of battle.” It is like a standoff, and the final quarter-hour go away you on the sting of your seat. Once I ask if that sort of heightened back-and-forth intimidated her in any respect, Lemmon is fast to inform me simply the alternative: “It is extraordinarily enjoyable! It is simply being there and respiratory and responding to the second.” It helps that she has Friedman for a scene accomplice, who she describes as “magnificent” and says makes every part really feel simpler.
Enjoying Jane is an attractive problem that renews itself day-after-day for Lemmon. Having been with this character for over a 12 months, Lemmon says Jane has change into embedded in her physique. Reflecting again on her early days of prepping for the function, Lemmon says she did fairly a little bit of analysis to get into Jane’s conflicted mindset. She learn plenty of books, together with Uncanny Valley; listened to tech podcasts; and thought critically concerning the web, how younger and limitless it’s, and its many capabilities.
The present has given Lemmon a brand new perspective on the web. “How may it not?!” she laughs. “I do not wish to suppose an excessive amount of concerning the issues that [Jane] says concerning the web as a result of they’re actually nefarious. Every little thing is entwined with the web in methods which are unimaginable to detangle, and [there’s not] a lot I can actually do about that. I am a younger lady alive in 2024. That is what it’s.”
As for the present’s continued success, Lemmon applauds Friedlich for writing one thing that basically speaks to the second of life that we’re in. “I believe it may be kind of refreshing to have that mirrored again to an viewers, even when it is tough to take a look at,” she says.
Earlier this month, the hit present was prolonged by means of October 27, one other milestone of success for the play.
It appears Lemmon might be staying on Broadway for the foreseeable future, however up subsequent, she is going to top-line the indie movie The Philosophy of Gown. (It is the challenge she wrapped the evening earlier than Getts’s excellent news name.) The actor additionally serves as a producer on the darkish satire, which is co-written and directed by Cyrus Duff. Lemmon and Duff have been longtime collaborators since their days at Yale, and the movie marks their first characteristic collectively. She describes it to me as “a darkish have a look at viral ambition, feminine friendship, and the world of trend,” to which my ears perk up. It is one other Lemmon challenge to look ahead to.
Characters which are exhausting to place down will without end be engaging to Lemmon, and she or he admits she’s joyful to remain on this darkish, heady house for so long as the initiatives could have her. “These are the elements I’ve dreamt of taking part in for a very very long time,” she tells me.
Job is now taking part in on the Hayes Theater.
Photographer: Richie Ramirez Jr.
Stylist: Jensen Edmondson
