Marjorie Prime (c) Joan Marcus
Broadway: Marjorie Prime
2nd Stage Production at the Helen Hayes Theatre
Memory is an elusive thing in Marjorie Prime, Jordan Harrison's 2015 exceptional play now making its debut on Broadway, and even when we have a portable encyclopedia and essentially our life’s timeline (via social media) in the palm of our hands, it doesn’t help. Somewhere in the near future, Majorie (Academy Award nominee June Squibb) is in a retirement home, and while the year is never specified, the eighty-something Majorie mindlessly sings Beyonce, which her daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon) and her son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein) don’t recognize (come on Harrison, Beyonce is timeless). One of the services that this retirement home provides is an AI avatar of someone in the resident’s life to help them with either loneliness or as a memory jog. For Marjorie, it’s her late-husband Walter (Christopher Lowell), but as he appeared in his 30s. Walter appears in what seems to be a hologram (as portrayed in the 2019 film version) and can be accessed by anyone who calls for him. Majorie knows she’s being manipulated by Walter’s Prime (as they are called), but she occasionally indulges in the nostalgia of their shared history when he recounts events uploaded to its Prime’s memory. Tess is suspicious of this service, but Jon thinks anything to help Marjorie in her final years is worth it. Where the play goes from there, I won’t spoil, but Harrison does a wonderful job giving us variations on his themes, which illuminates and beautifully humanizes the timeless sadness surrounding death and dementia.
Marjorie Prime (c) Joan Marcus
Ten years after the play’s premiere, we are getting closer to the reality of Marjorie Prime. There’s an actual company called ElevenLabs that will provide AI Voice Cloning, using a dead loved one’s voice, to have conversations with a grieving customer. And while there are some dated elements (Jon uses a notebook instead of, say, an iPad when taking notes), the emotional honesty of the play is still as satisfying as it is devastating. Harrison and director Anne Kauffman present a recognizable yet sterile near future, especially as the Primes, who may seem human, occasionally slip up, mostly because of user error, thus breaking the illusion of, in this case, dead Walter. The cast is impeccable. I wouldn’t think anyone could match original Marjorie Lois Smith (who was also in the film), but Squibb is a feisty and defiant Marjorie without sacrificing her humor. It’s astonishing that Squibb made her Broadway debut in the original 1959 Gypsy as a replacement of one of the strippers and is still doing impressive work at the age of 96. Nixon and Burstein provide the intellectual debate of Primes as this new technology comes with ethical concerns, and both reach emotional highpoints of their characters that are impressive and devastating. Lowell, as the young Walter, doesn’t provide the empathy that Jon Hamm did in the film, but he’s still very effective in his warmth and remoteness. Marjorie Prime, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is one of my favorite plays of the 21st Century, so I was afraid its sheen might be diminished by a new production. Thankfully, it’s still powerful and thoughtful and one of the best on Broadway right now.
Gruesome Playground Injuries (c) Emilio Madrid
Theater: Gruesome Playground Injuries
At the Lucille Lortel Theatre
The guardian angels of two kids at a parochial school seemed to have abandoned them in Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries. The pair’s life stories from age 8 to 38 are told out of order, but each scene focuses on their reunion when one or both parties are injured. Their initial meeting happens when Doug (Succession star Nicholas Braun making his Off-Broadway debut), who has decided to ride his bike off the roof of their school ends up in the nurse’s office where Kayleen (two-time Tony-winner Kara Young), is suffering from stomach pains. This morbid meeting (“Can I touch it?”) is just the start of their odd relationship. Doug, it seems, is accident prone without a lick of sense, while Kayleen’s pain is out of her control, whether it’s recurring digestive problems or physical manifestations of psychological trauma, throughout the 30 years of this play. The second scene, in their 20s, is when drunk Kayleen shows up at a hospital in what is the most gruesome of Doug’s injuries involving fireworks. We also get a scene at a school dance, at a funeral home, an ice rink and many hospitals (both physical and mental), and each time, their fascination with each other is renewed.
Gruesome Playground Injuries (c) Emilio Madrid
When I saw the first New York production in 2011 with Jennifer Carpenter and Pablo Schreiber in the leads, I couldn’t figure out why playwright Joseph would put the audience through the wringer with scene after scene of just groan-inducing imagery (the ickiest for me involves a rusty nail). But in this production, directed by Neil Pepe, I felt more of the guardian angel angle as their school had a statue of an angel figure on their roof that may not be what it appears to be. While this doesn’t elevate the play in my estimation, it does indicate what Joseph is aiming for. Pepe tries to play down the grisly aspect of the play by having the actors in full view of the audience putting on make-up or bandages as if to say, “it’s all an illusion.” Braun is fine as Doug, playing up his arrested development goofiness, but has a harder time, especially during adult scenes, making us understand how he views his own accident-prone life. Young does a better job as Kayleen, which is the better written of the two characters, as it becomes obvious that her chaotic and unsteady family life is the primary reason for her medical conditions. Gruesome Playground Injuries is certainly a feast for actors to play (and with only two characters, easier to produce for theaters), and while it’s easy to admire the actors’ stamina, the script by Joseph (who is most known for Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo which was on Broadway with Robin Williams in his last New York stage appearance), still leaves me cold.
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