‘Sin Eaters,’ a pitch-perfect noir from Theatre Exile, is now extended through March 7 | Review

“I think I need to quit my job,” Mary says at the end of Sin Eaters, world-debuting at Theatre Exile (now extended to stream through March 7). “It’s driving me crazy. I think it’s making me a bad person.”

Seeing the physical state Mary is in (a bravura performance by Barrymore-winner Bi Jean Ngo), we agree. So does her partner, Derek (persuasive, edgy David M. Raine), aghast at the transformation in her. It’s a play well worth seeing.

We’ve all been there: You take a job because you need the dough. You keep working, and little by little that job starts to change you.

The title of Anna Moench’s Sin Eaters refers to the ritual practice of consuming a meal to absorb the sins of the living or dead. The sin eaters here are content moderators — office workers like Mary who monitor and gatekeep content for social-media platforms. “You eat the weirdos’ sins so other people don’t have to.”

Moench (who worked as a content moderator herself) has concocted an ear-perfect noir. Millennials trying to find their way encounter issues of ethics, moral responsibility, depravity, and the psychological hazards of social media immersion.

Mary and Derek live in the world’s worst apartment somewhere in Staten Island. Their upstairs neighbors Reesie and Michael are abusive and violent. They scream and blast bad music.

Director Matt Pfeiffer coaxes nuanced performances from Ngo and Raine, a real-life couple who are very good at playing a couple. He is embarrassed at his “ignominious return to catering,” humiliated to be “cutting off pieces of my life and selling them to the highest bidder.” She’s sorry she has to keep after him about money.

In their quest “to get out of this place,” Mary lands a job as a content moderator at Between Us, a new, anonymous social networking platform. Her job is to view and delete toxic, cruel, hateful, or illegal posts. (On Mary’s cubicle wall is a list of deletables: “Porn, Gore, Sexual Solicitation, Racism, Hate Speech, Bestiality, Animal Abuse, Torture … “) She signs an NDA at work and can’t tell Derek anything about her job.

We get tremendous close-up sequences (brava to video editor Kelly Orenshaw) as Ngo’s face contorts in repulsion, outrage, and horror. She sees horrific crimes, but not knowing the who or the where, all she can do is hit Delete.

Production designer Drew Billiau makes the most of a low-budget, claustrophobic-on-purpose show. We hate that apartment as much as Mary and Derek do.

Especially fine is the cinematography (by Jen Cleary). We jump-cut from a wide shot to an iPhone POV, then to a black-and-white security camera, then to a narrow screenshot vertical. The effect is to skew our understanding, to suggest divided and changing minds and positions. These brilliant uses of the virtual screen propel the show.

How will Mary weather the onslaught? She says to someone who isn’t listening: “Do you ever go home after an eight-hour shift of looking at porn, torture, abuse, and murder, and think, ‘Who are all these people around me on the subway? Who are they really’?”

Hello, paranoia. But Mary is hardly alone. Anyone in the social media world runs the same risks. That’s what makes Theatre Exile’s Sin Eaters crackle.

Sin Eaters

Theatre Exile virtual production, extended to stream online through March 7. Tickets, $25 at https://theatreexile.org/shows/sin-eaters/