When producer-dramaturg Hannah Getts referred to 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 night time 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, acquired a much-deserved promotion. It was transferring to Broadway. “When she instructed me the information, it blew my thoughts,” Lemmon tells me from her New York condominium. 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 large Bay Space tech job following a really public meltdown at work. As a way 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 might be extraordinarily fortunate and actually have my work lower out for myself,” Lemmon says. She had been desirous to get again to theater for some time, auditioning for various roles, however nothing was aligning for her. “With this one, all the things 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 offered 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 difficult. She’s so confident, however she’s so fearful,” she says. “She has rather a lot occurring, 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 making an attempt to crack her. That’s all you’ll be able to hope for when taking up a task.”
Over an exciting 80-minute stress take a look at, Lemmon and Friedman (Succession) ship a improbable 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. After I ask if that type 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 respiration and responding to the second.” It helps that she has Friedman for a scene associate, who she describes as “magnificent” and says makes all the things really feel simpler.
Enjoying Jane is a ravishing problem that renews itself every single day for Lemmon. Having been with this character for over a 12 months, Lemmon says Jane has turn 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 a number 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. All the things is entwined with the web in methods which might be unattainable 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 actually speaks to the second of life that we’re in. “I believe it may be type of refreshing to have that mirrored again to an viewers, even when it is troublesome to have a look at,” she says.
Earlier this month, the hit present was prolonged by way of October 27, one other milestone of success for the play.
It appears Lemmon will likely be staying on Broadway for the foreseeable future, however up subsequent, she’s going to top-line the indie movie The Philosophy of Gown. (It is the venture she wrapped the night time 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 function collectively. She describes it to me as “a darkish have a look at viral ambition, feminine friendship, and the world of vogue,” to which my ears perk up. It is one other Lemmon venture to stay up for.
Characters which might be exhausting to place down will perpetually be enticing to Lemmon, and he or she admits she’s glad to remain on this darkish, heady area for so long as the tasks can have her. “These are the components 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
