Theatre in Review: Marjorie Prime (Second Stage/Hayes Theater)

	June Squibb. Photo: Joan Marcus

I'm sorry to say that we're finally catching up with Marjorie Prime. To be sure, Jordan Harrison's drama, in a production at Playwrights Horizons featuring Lois Smith and Lisa Emery, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. (A film followed, although few saw it.) And it always had its haunting qualities, which were certainly noted at the time. Yet its premise -- depicting a future in which the elderly and/or bereaved console themselves with manufactured simulacra of their departed loved ones -- seemed, well, a little manufactured itself.

Not that Harrison was alone: By 2015, when Marjorie Prime debuted, we'd already had the Spike Jonze film Her and Alex Garland's Ex Machina. Recent years have seen I'm Your Man, in which Maren Eggert takes a robotic Dan Stevens for a test-drive in and out of the bedroom. Let us not forget Maybe Happy Ending, last season's Tony-winning musical, about cast-off "helperbots" looking for a little affection. In real life -- do we still call it that? -- we've seen the seemingly unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence, including wildly hallucinating ChatGPTs, people getting cozy with AI entities, and, most chillingly, the case of the teenager coached by a bot to commit suicide. It's not just that Marjorie Prime is rapidly losing its status as speculative fiction. Give it a couple of years, and it will count as kitchen-sink realism.

For whatever reason -- the passage of time, a slightly more acute production, the pull of recent events -- one can more easily appreciate the delicately layered structure of laughter and pain that Harrison has constructed. It begins with the astonishing June Squibb, as the elderly Marjorie, deep in conversation with the strapping young Walter, who we soon realize is her husband. Scratch that; he is Walter Prime, an android recreation; it is the early 2060s, and such robotic companions are a fact of life. Marjorie's daughter, Tess, is scandalized that her mother has opted for this thirtyish, easy-on-the-eyes version of her late spouse, but, after all, the customer is always right: "I'll be right here, Marjorie," Walter says. "Whenever you need me. I have all the time in the world." If that doesn't unnerve you, it should.

In many ways, Marjorie Prime is a play about memory and communication, how they define our humanity. As Jon, Marjorie's son-in-law, notes, the well-programmed Walter is better informed than Marjorie about her past, reminding her of long-forgotten events. "It even studies our imperfections, to sound more real: It can use non sequiturs...It can...misplace modifiers," Jon marvels, adding, "I can already see the change in her. Just to have eight or nine stories to hold onto." Even as Marjorie fights to retain her memories, responsible, resentful Tess can't let go of her status as second-best child, nor can she escape the shadow cast by the suicide of her brother, Damian, at age thirteen. (As so often happens in unhappy families, history repeats itself: Tess' daughter doesn't speak to her.) As the play progresses, and Marjorie is replaced by a Prime of her own, Tess confesses, "We didn't tell each other things, secret things, not really. Some people have a point where their parents stop being their parents to them -- you start talking as one adult to another. I'm not sure we ever had that."

But, as Tess comes to realize, in speaking with the prime version of Marjorie, she is really talking to herself. Otherwise, why would she edit out any mention of Damian? Is it more comforting that the android knows nothing about the loss that stained the family's existence? Does it matter if, this time, Tess gets the last word? This heartbreaking attempt at rewriting the family history is doomed to failure and will lead to additional tragedy, followed by the appearance of another prime, not to be named here.

You can call Marjorie Prime a horror story, I suppose, but its primary mood is elegiac, a wistful look at the fading connections that have sustained us over many millennia. Seen in conjunction with Harrison's most recent work, The Antiquities, which reduces human history to a museum exhibit of the distant future, curated by highly advanced digital beings, the authorial vision couldn't be clearer. This time around, it feels eerily plausible.

I can't quite explain why Anne Kauffman's production feels superior to the original, which she also directed. But, in part, I suspect, casting is responsible: Cynthia Nixon's Tess is amusingly put-upon with the real Marjorie ("Am I supposed to not notice she's being nicer to that thing than to me?" she snaps, referring to Walter Prime) and sadly ill at ease with the replacement model. ("It's weird -- sometimes it feels like it cares more than Mom did.") Only gradually and with great skill does Nixon let on that something is profoundly wrong with Tess' spirit. Danny Burstein is equally fine as Jon, a hapless good guy, forever ministering to Marjorie and trying to soothe Tess' deep-seated anger. (Typically, Jon is the conduit between Tess and their estranged daughter.) As Walter, Christopher Lowell is charming, affable, and not quite human; it's a beautifully judged performance.

Squibb is the paradox at the heart of the production. Now aged ninety-six (a good ten years older than Marjorie), she captures with devastating accuracy the feeling of an elderly woman becoming unmoored from herself while remaining utterly on top of her role. She mines comedy from Marjorie's distress that only she remembers such cultural detritus as ZZ Top, "Single Ladies," and Rosemary's Baby. Her exchanges with Walter are richly poignant. For example, Walter recalls them seeing the film My Best Friend's Wedding. "There's a woman -- Julia Roberts," he begins. "For a while, it was always Julia Roberts." Marjorie asks, "Did I like it?" "You said you wanted a gay best friend afterward," says Walter. "Did I get one?" she inquires. "I'm afraid I don't have that information," he replies. Squibb deftly makes subtle adjustments as the prime edition, smoothing over some of Marjorie's sharper edges, adopting a conciliatory tone that Tess finds deeply unsettling. Let's note that, given Squibb's remarkable performance, plus Anne Reid's powerful turn in Oedipus, this is a banner year for nonagenarians on Broadway.

The play and the production design still struggle to suggest what the near future might look like. This is less of an issue with the script, which is tightly focused on four characters and the hold of the past over them, but I still find Lee Jellinek's expansive, green, patterned house interior to be weirdly empty, as if minimalist design will ultimately do away with furniture altogether, save an easy chair or two. Marion Talan de la Rosa makes no predictions in her costumes; in this case, that's probably a smart choice. Ben Stanton's lighting, especially his handling of the actors' faces in the final tableau, is highly efficient, as is Daniel Kluger's sound design, which is blessedly transparent. (His original music effectively evokes Marjorie's long-past career as a violinist.)

Like The Antiquities, Marjorie Prime suggests that, long after we have all departed the planet, the androids will remain, enacting an almost authentic version of human life. An unusually gentle piece, it nevertheless sends a chill up one's spine. We've got to figure out the difference between ourselves and technology, Harrison warns us. And we'd better hurry; indeed, it may already be too late. --David Barbour