‘Marjorie Prime’ @ Stage West
Photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Martha Heimberg
“I sound like whoever I talk to,” says Walter (a weirdly alluring Parker Gray, in graceful machine mode). Walter Prime, as his owners refer to him, is an AI-generated robot specifically manufactured to look exactly like a deceased loved one, there to help take the weight of grief off those vulnerable humans left behind.
Jordan Harrison’s 2014 Marjorie Prime at Stage West (set in the year 2053) is directed with a tender lightness by Sasha Maya Ada in the company’s reconfigurable “Evie” theater space—for this show arranged as theater-in-the-round.
Director Ada uses the impressive revolving stage exquisitely, even thematically. In life, we only see the world and each other in pieces, at an angle, depending on where we’re standing (or in this case sitting). We teach our brains to construct three dimensions and whole stories from partial views of people and their doings.
Walter Prime, the robot/cyborg, is explaining how he knows what he knows to his new client, 85-year-old Marjorie—a painfully sad Cindee Mayfield, whose sudden smile changes the atmosphere in the intimate theater. She’s ordered the handsome, young version of her late husband Walter, and Walter Prime retells the happy stories she’s told him “on her good days.” He never rushes her. “I have all the time in the world,” he says quietly. Parker stays preternaturally still when he’s offstage, remaining visible on the sidelines. Costume designer Whitney Coulter has equipped her Prime characters with a small chest light that indicates they’re being recharged.
So what if Walter Prime’s not real? His nearness and his affirmation of a time of joy in her life help Marjorie get through the misery of suddenly losing her husband, and gradually losing her mind. Losing herself, that is, since Harrison’s play poses the question: Are our memories, whatever their source and however reflective of reality, the sum of what we call our selves?
Marjorie’s high-strung, combative daughter Tess (Shannon J. McGrann) doesn’t much like her Mom’s new playmate. She tells husband that “they just want them [the elderly] pacified, Jon—they don’t care.” He replies: “She’s 85, honey; when she wakes up she doesn’t know where she is.” “I can hear you,” Marjorie reminds them. The empathetic son-in-law (Jakie Cabe is a likeable Jon) attains a shaken, tragic dimension when the tables turn halfway through the play.
Jon teases Tess that she’s jealous because a machine communicates better with her mother than she does. Facing her own middle-aged future, a grief-stricken Tess says, “I don’t know why we have to keep each other alive so long.” Angered and afraid, Jon blankly summarizes his wife’s philosophy: “So living is just a distraction from death.”
But such heavy themes are offset by sweet comic moments that surprise us and make us laugh. Marjorie’s kids and grandkids have no idea who Z Z Top is (or was); Marjorie’s reference to long beards and musicians draws a blank. And we smile at the same time we tear up, when Mayfield responds to a Vivaldi recording by very slowly raising her arms and playing the piece on an imaginary violin.
As the play progresses, we see that the characters speak more honestly (and reveal secrets more easily) to the questioning Primes who represent the deceased—more open to them than they ever could be to the living person. Toward the end, as the stage turns very, very slowly, Marjorie Prime says, delivering the glowing Mayfield smile, “How nice that we could love somebody.”
Kudos to set designer Allen Dean for an easy, elegant set that lets everybody see the characters from all sides. As the stage revolves, scenes and characters move easily and normally. It’s a genius idea for smaller-scale theater in the round—which otherwise can force tiring motion on actors trying to reach all four sides of the audience.
Special shout-out to lighting designer Bryan Stevenson for the cold blue cast on the stage in chilling moments, and sudden bursts of yellow for laughter and warmth. Sound designer Claudia Jenkins Martinez keeps sound and light in perfect sync. Just terrific ensemble work, all round. Director trust, most likely!
Marjorie Prime is beautifully produced, and it’s fun to see a lovely, positive use of much-maligned AI presented so entertainingly and thoughtfully.
WHEN: January 18-February 11, 2024
WHERE: Stage West (Evelyn Wheeler Swenson Theatre), 821 West Vickery, Fort Worth
WEB: stagewest.org
