Why Marjorie Prime Feels More Human Than Ever According to Its Starry Cast

Marjorie Prime arrives on Broadway with a cast that has strong thoughts about the advantages and drawbacks of intelligent systems. Written by Jordan Harrison and directed by Anne Kauffman, the drama stars acting legend June Squibb, Tony winners Danny Burstein and Cynthia Nixon and rising star Christopher Lowell. The production began performances on November 20 at the Hayes Theater, where it officially opens on December 8.

The play follows Marjorie, an older woman who spends her final years speaking to a holographic version of her late husband. This digital companion looks young and handsome and knows only what Marjorie tells him. With each detail he absorbs, he becomes a curated version of the man she once loved. It is a simple idea that opens a door to big questions about grief, identity and the cost of choosing the gentler version of a painful past.

At the center is Squibb, who at 96 is filled with vitality and curiosity. She first saw the play long before signing on. “I had seen it at the Mark Taper Forum [in Los Angeles] before it came into New York 10 some years ago,” she tells Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek on The Broadway Show. “It is a wonderful play.” She laughs at how much the world has changed since then, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence. “Nobody knew the extent that it would come into our lives. “I think we have to figure out and know how it will help us. Now, we already know how it can hurt us and harm us, and I think we have to be strong about that.”

Lowell, who plays Walter, explains the concept of the piece. “Basically I am an AI of Marjorie’s deceased husband when he was younger,” he says. His job is to absorb memories good or bad and reflect them back. The catch is that the Prime cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction. “It just brings up these really beautiful thorny questions about memory and grief and companionship and love.”

Nixon, who plays Marjorie’s daughter Tess, was hooked from her first read. “I was really captivated by it immediately,” she says. “It is so much about grief. And then it is also about the weirdness of AI and the pluses and the minuses and trying to parse that out.” Tess is torn between keeping her mother comfortable and facing old wounds. “Do we take the shadows out, or do we include them?” she asks.

Burstein sees that tension from the family side of the story. “It feels like a play that a decade ago was futuristic,” he says. “Now we are dealing with it.” He points out how the Prime lets characters sculpt a more comfortable version of a person who is gone. “Do you want to tell them about the terrible fight that you had, or do you want to make that go away and be not part of their personality at all?” he asks. “The real connection between two human beings is something that is unique and beautiful and chemical, and should not be taken for granted.”

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