Jordan hopes to move up in the company but is treated like a mere servant (or worse) by the others, for whom she makes coffee or cleans up after when there’s vomit or backed-up sewage. When the company hires a second Black employee, a man also named Jordan (the playwright cheekily names him 1. Jordan, and his last name is, yes, Savage) who’s in a position of supposed power as the new director of culture, our exasperated heroine at first is on her guard, then drops her guard, then…well, that’s all in the second act.

 

The first half of Jordans moves swimmingly and has some pointed laughs, although there are easy jokes as well, since the targets (clueless whites, office politics) are obvious. Then act two begins, and Olujobi’s play awkwardly moves toward more abstract, surreal lunacy that includes a surprising pregnancy (the two Jordans increasingly become interchangeable, to themselves and the others) and a literally bloody denouement.

 

Jordans climaxes with its heroine staring hauntedly at the audience, but in this context, the ending makes little sense, either as reality—it’s not as if Jordan is brandishing a gun and can’t be subdued—or as a stark metaphor for unleashing her cumulative anger over her subjugation. 

 

Whitney White’s brisk production plays out on Matt Saunders’ antiseptically white set, dominated by a large, curved wall that acts as a mocking hulk against Jordan’s aspirations, all cleverly underscored by Cha See’s lighting. The script has Jordan moving around chairs, tables and props between scenes as a way of showing both her subordination and indispensability to all, but since it’s the third straight off-Broadway show where I saw performers move props, it was less than effective. 

 

The supporting cast provides amusing caricatures, while Toby Onwumere, as 1. Jordan, and Kate Walsh, as Hailey, are better, making Olujobi’s lines far more biting than they are on the page. Best of all is Naomi Lorrain, who as Jordan carries the weight of this serious but stretched-out joke on her shoulders, giving a colossal performance that is funny, sympathetic and even touching.