ajhlovestheatre

MARJORIE PRIME

by Jordan Harrison

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole

Menier Chocolate Factory, London – until 6 May 2023

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/Online/default.asp

When we first encounter the majestic Anne Reid as the titular character of this highly original American tragicomedy, she’s sitting in a state-of-the-art living facility chatting through reminiscences and shared memories with an elegantly suited man (Richard Fleeshman) many decades her junior. Strangely though, they talk like an old married couple, except that he sometimes needs clueing-in with certain facts ….and what’s with his ongoing air of amused detachment? The reason for that detachment becomes clear soon enough… Fleeshman’s Walter is in fact an Artificial Intelligence avatar for Marjorie‘s late husband, and he is the physical manifestation of how she wants to remember him, which is in his prime. ‘Prime’ is also the name for these ingenious, robotic creations, designed to help with the grieving process and Walter’s Prime is here to spoil Marjorie with endless time and patience.

A 2018 off-Broadway success, Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime has arrived at the Menier Chocolate Factory with a powerhouse cast, in an immaculate, subtly unsettling production by Dominic Dromgoole that’s shot through with moments of piercing human pain. Perhaps most surprisingly, given the subject matter, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny, although the humour is definitely more bitter than sweet.

Sci-fi on stage can be tricky: Mike Bartlett’s otherwise wonderful epic Earthquakes In London came unstuck during its dystopian futuristic sections, where the heartfelt brilliance of what had gone before was sacrificed to fanciful material that verged on the risible. If Ayckbourn was more successful in his late 1980s/early 1990s Henceforward and Comic Potential, that may be because they were comedies, however twisted. Harrison’s piece avoids the pitfalls by keeping the setting and terminology low-key and not too far removed from the familiar (for instance, at one point, the idea of somebody still having an iPhone is floated as something rather quaint and archaic). He renders it even more relatable by making Marjorie’s anxious daughter Tess (Nancy Carroll, utterly sublime) mistrustful of the technology that has inserted into her life a forever version of the Dad she lost years previously.

Harrison suggests that the Primes, with their bland lack of jagged edges and conflict, and who have to be drip fed information in order to interact with their humans, can be more comforting and agreeable to deal with than the real thing, but never suggests that is actually a good thing. His text questions the whole notion of truth and the reliability of memory; it’s big complex stuff but boiled down to this family, these issues, this time.

It’s those human aspects that really makes this strange yet compelling piece fly. The conflicted, guilt-infused relationship between Marjorie and Tess is exquisitely handled, and almost unbearably poignant. So is the depiction of the marriage between Tess and her kind, endlessly affable husband (Tony Jayawardena, providing unshowy, heartbreaking proof that good doesn’t necessarily mean boring): he’s a lot more optimistic than she is, and doesn’t understand the full extent of her turmoil, although eventually he can’t escape it.

The acting is flawless throughout. Fleeshman never overplays Walter’s benign blankness and it’s fascinating watching the calculated, carefully calibrated way he moves. Reid has seldom been better, suggesting a likeable but frequently spiky mother figure, matter-of-fact, sometimes unkindly so, and unwilling to accept the encroaching of the dark.

Jayawardena makes something fine and selfless out of Jon’s big-heartedness and is desperately moving in the penultimate scene where he is essentially priming Tess’s own Prime with some very painful memories. Carroll inhabits every nuance and beat of Tess’s warmth, dark humour, exasperation…it’s an astonishing performance that gets if anything even more impressive when she reappears as the Prime, where the uprightness is replaced with a serenity that unnerves but fascinates: even her face looks subtly different, smoother, glossier, yet blanker.

If you’re in the grip of an existential crisis, or are generally feeling a bit low, this is maybe not the play for you. However, it’s a riveting, thought-provoking, and ultimately haunting meditation on identity, getting older, what we leave behind, and the effect we have on those we love and those who love us. It’s a reminder to ensure that life isn’t just something to be endured while waiting for death. It also deals very intelligently and presciently with the idea of A.I. and the thorny subject of humanity versus the brilliance of science.

There’s an engrossingly eerie final scene involving all the Primes that lingers in the memory after the play is over, simultaneously funny and chilling. You need to see it for yourself. Although running at a fleet 80 minutes, Marjorie Prime is more profound and troubling than many plays twice its length.