<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1604878" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/3RD.June-Squibb-in-MARJORIE-PRIME-Photo-by-Joan-Marcus.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A photograph shows June Squibb sitting alone in a recliner wrapped in a plaid blanket, looking upward with a calm but distant expression in a scene from Marjorie Prime.” width=”970″ height=”675″ data-caption=’June Squibb’s Broadway resumé reaches back to a stint in the original production of Gypsy in 1960. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo by Joan Marcus</span>’>
Just imagine how many writers are drafting A.I. plays at this very moment: rom-coms with digital lovers; thrillers about Chatbot psychosis; social critiques of reality-warping misinfo. Bad news, folks: Jordan Harrison got there first. At least in terms of mainstream, well-received plays, Marjorie Prime touched on those topics a decade ago (after plenty of movies and TV had). Still relevant after its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, the 90-minute chamber drama sparkles and unsettles in its Broadway debut, positing that holographic avatars will remember us after we’re gone, airbrushing life’s sorrow and complexity from every snapshot. In 2025, such a message is not ahead of its time, but perfectly punctual.
Humans and their dehumanizing toys: Harrison pursued the theme earlier this year in The Antiquities (also at Playwrights), more ambitious in scope than Marjorie Prime but less successful in showcasing characters worth caring about. Here, a fine four-member ensemble under the sensitive yet clinical direction of Anne Kauffman navigates an arc familiar to anyone who’s cared for an elderly parent or survived a family in which mental illness was ignored. Its tech twist (in the future, one may talk to the virtual deceased) is digital gravy on a dysfunctional family formula.
<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1604877" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/2ND.Danny-Burstein-Cynthia-Nixon-in-MARJORIE-PRIME-Photo-by-Joan-Marcus.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A photograph shows Danny Burstein sitting beside Cynthia Nixon in a modern kitchen set, with Burstein looking toward her as she faces forward with a pained expression during a scene from Marjorie Prime.” width=”970″ height=”709″ data-caption=’Danny Burstein and Cynthia Nixon. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo by Joan Marcus</span>’>
Marjorie (June Squibb) is a frail but feisty octogenarian tended to by her middle-aged daughter, Tess (Cynthia Nixon), and Tess’s sweet-tempered husband, Jon (Danny Burstein). It’s about 40 years from now. An unseen carer named Julie looks in on Marjorie, and her occasional lapses (leaving the blinds closed) or overstepping (giving a Bible to Marjorie) provoke bursts of anger in Tess. A fourth person inhabits Marjorie’s apartment—although it’s neither a person nor capable of habitation. Walter (Christopher Lowell) is a 3D pixel version of Marjorie’s husband in his studly thirties: “Walter Prime” (does Amazon sell them?) He sits with Marjorie and asks questions about their lives, which becomes part of his memory bank and allows the creature to impersonate Walter better.
The series Black Mirror has been here, with a 2013 episode (“Be Right Back”) about a grieving wife who downloads her husband’s social media and digital footprint into an android lookalike. One would think similar technology would exist in Harrison’s future, but he downplays the world-building. The focus instead is on how minutiae from Marjorie’s past—fleeting details and tragedies—are transmitted from geriatric memory to a digital archive, then cross-checked with other input and recombined as biographical spam. The play is delicate and episodic and best enjoyed without spoilers. Tess once had a brother, and Marjorie and Walter may have passed along to their children a predisposition for depression and self-harm. If Tess’s psychological problems come across as device-y, they do provide an emotional wallop toward the end as Jon brings a new Prime up to date on the family. As humans are periodically replaced by eager and curious Primes, we tumble headlong into the uncanny valley.
If living long is a form of time travel, June Squibb is practically Gallifreyan. A spunky trouper at 96, her Broadway resumé reaches back to a stint in the original production of Gypsy in 1960. Beyond earning tropey chuckles from “salty grandmother with no effs to give,” Squibb rises to the unique affective challenge her character presents. Marjorie was born in 1977, and now she’s in her eighties. Harrison gets laughs out of a little old lady using slang expressions like “Busted!” and trying to remember the lyrics to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” (I, for one, will be mumbling R.E.M.’s early catalog in a dreadful nursing home one day.) Squibb has a frisky youthfulness that boosts the illusion—even if I doubt Gen Xers will sound quite so 1950s in their dotage. I was a little surprised Marjorie didn’t sport a tattoo or cuss more. But these are quibbles.
Nixon and Burstein turn in solid, nuanced work, carrying much of the play’s emotional weight and narrative momentum. Lowell strikes the right balance of warmth to spectrum-y strangeness in the learning bot. As for the look of the future, it’s vivid without being distractingly outlandish. Scenic designer Lee Jellinek builds coolly modern interiors, while Márion Talán de la Rosa’s clothes emphasize gender-neutral comfort. The sound design and compositions are by Daniel Kluger—which only falters when a cutesy musical button at the very end strikes a glib note.
As any cultured person knows, Tom Stoppard died two weeks ago. He didn’t leave behind any plays about robots or artificial intelligence. There was no need. Stoppard’s absurdly articulate characters and giddily recherché comedies were organic precursors of A.I.: libraries of data combed and synthesized for a general audience. Of course, Stoppard did it with style, originality and inimitable humor. One of his quotes occurred to me during Marjorie Prime. The art of the playwright, he once wrote, “was to order the flow of information from the stage to the audience.” Harrison practices that art humbly but elegantly, controlling the biographical drip from his characters into the Primes and then back to the audience, which appreciates how a person’s essence eludes the bare facts. True memory is human, imbued with love and grief. The rest is just a simulation.
Marjorie Prime | 1hr 30mins. No intermission. | Hayes Theater | 240 West 44th Street | 212-541-4516 | Get Tickets Here
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