Review: Jordans Is a Shaggy Satire of New York’s Cultural Elite

The Public Theater is on a roll. Three currently running Broadway musicals originated at its off-Broadway Newman Theater: Hamilton, Suffs, and Hell’s Kitchen. That last one, a coming-of-age tale set to the music of Alicia Keys, has been widely described as a love letter to New York City. By contrast, Ife Olujobi’s Jordans, now making its world premiere at the Public’s LuEsther Hall, is hate mail addressed to the Big Apple’s creative class.

It takes place at Atlas studios, a promotional content creation/events space in a trendy neighborhood (scenic designer Matt Saunders excellently highlights the architectural details of the LuEsther, part of the former Astor Library, to create a chicly repurposed vibe). Of the seven fulltime employees at Atlas, only Jordan (Naomi Lorrain), the lowest-paid (and only Black) employee, does any real work.

Everyone else seems to be the beneficiary of some obscure jobs program through which superfluous elites help other slightly less superfluous elites obtain attention. But when their fearless leader, Hailey (Kate Walsh), declares that Atlas has a culture problem, she seeks to rectify it by hiring the firm’s second Black employee, a “Director of Culture” — who is also named Jordan (Toby Onwumere).

It’s a hilarious premise and an ironic choice for the Public, an organization, like so many not-for-profits, besotted with DEI initiatives, led by an extravagantly compensated visionary, but mostly powered by meagerly paid underlings looking to get a foot in the door of an exclusive prestige industry. I would love to be able to read the minds of the ushers who watch it every night.

But this isn’t just a play that will appeal to Gotham creatives and their aspirants. Deftly directed by Whitney White, Jordans is an undeniably funny, if somewhat shaggy satire of office politics and the kind of people drawn to the attention economy.

The actors do not squander the opportunity, with most playing multiple roles as both the employees of Atlas and its clients. Matthew Russell delivers a very funny portrayal of a lifestyle guru who bears more than a passing resemblance to Andrew Tate. Similarly, Brian Muller dons cornrows and facial tattoos for a laugh-out-loud appearance as a fraudulent hip-hop artist who surely shares a stylist with Post Malone (costume design Qween Jean is having a ball and, consequently, so are we).

Walsh trades in her passive-aggressive Midwestern girlboss character from Emily in Paris for the harder stuff. We first encounter her mythically loathsome Hailey dumping coffee on Jordan’s head. She’s Miranda beastly and surely has a workplace harassment lawsuit coming her way — or, in the small world of New York media where one bad reference means you’re out, maybe not.

In the first act, Olujobi skillfully walks the line between satire and realism, presenting scenarios that seem to explode everyday cruelty to grotesque proportions, but on reflection aren’t far from grotesque reality. At one point, Maggie (Meg Steedle) and Emma (Brontë England-Nelson) pitch Hailey on a Sheryl Sandberg-style networking event and appeal to her sense of sisterly toil: “Who is carrying the burden of responsibility for making sure the office runs smoothly?” Meanwhile upstage, Jordan carries a series of ever-larger potted plants to the mezzanine so Hailey can have a little oasis during shoot days. It’s the funniest sight gag in the whole play.

One hopes that, if nothing else, the indefatigable Lorrain is getting some muscle definition from this run. White cleverly has her move all the set pieces during transitions, acting as both stagehand and protagonist to underline just how indispensable and underappreciated Jordan is. I howled as she unloaded a sushi dinner from her purse and set the table for an afterwork meeting with the new Jordan.

“I’m not Affirmative Action or whatever. I’m qualified for this job, okay? Probably overqualified,” new Jordan tells her (Onwumere excels at presenting this delusion with the required sincerity). Deadpan, Jordan responds, “You are literally the diversity hire.”

The interactions between the Jordans offer the potential for trenchant commentary on the power dynamics of class and sex that an obsessive focus on race so often obscures (in a running gag, none of the white characters can tell the two Jordans apart even though one is a small woman and the other a jacked man). It perfectly sets the stage for an outrageous battle of wills, a meritocratic death match to serve as the main card of this uproarious play. Olujobi feints in that direction in the first act, but mostly abandons it by the second in favor of a fruitless dip into magical realism à la Freaky Friday.

A spectacularly violent finale is meant to shock the audience, but only masks the fact that Olujobi hasn’t landed on a satisfying conclusion to this play. Even a director as steady as White struggles to graft defined beats onto a sequence that feels like a hastily constructed escape hatch, leaving the audience not so much aghast as befuddled.

Still, Jordans is strong off-Broadway debut for Olujobi, a writer with a wicked sense of humor and an admirable willingness to violate taboos.