Jalayne Riewerts in Marjorie Prime
"Science fiction is here." So says Tess in Marjorie Prime, the current production at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre. I feel Tess' sentiment whenever I pick up a hand-sized slab that can instantly play music, movies, long-gone TV shows; translate languages; explain new tasks; lead me to places I've never been; show me real life, streaming live. Oh – it's a phone, too, and on it, I can even talk with imaginary entities.
Marjorie Prime is by Jordan Harrison, who has written 15 other plays, a novel, and some episodes of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, and it premiered in 2014, getting a movie adaptation in 2017. I enjoyed New Ground Theatre's production in 2018, yet – oh, irony! – I remembered nothing about it except the premise: Aging woman with failing memory talks daily with computer-generated version of dead husband. Harrison's stage piece is like a futuristic take on The Notebook, and I saw director Jennifer Kingry's smooth yet heart-rending Marjorie Prime on Thursday's opening night. I'm writing about it now, before I forget to.
The year is 2062, and the tech depicted exists in 2025, though not available on a mass scale. (Look up Proto Hologram and Holoconnects). A simulation of Marjorie's late husband Walter essentially is "the notebook," except it isn't a memoir – it arrived as a virtual cluster of blank pages, editable by anyone. Harrison's script is both dramatic and funny, and Kingry's cast of four excels at being both.
The accomplished Jalayne Riewerts is Marjorie, who is solid, real, and relatable from the moment she speaks. Gratifyingly – and kudos to Harrison for this – when Marjorie is funny, it's because she's deliberately cracking jokes; not because we're laughing at her memory loss. Eric Friedman plays the hologram Walter, a youthful version of the real man, who reminisces with its “wife” about her married life. Friedman, who gave a very pleasing performance in Richmond Hill's Laura last year, is a convincing artificial companion, with subtle shifts in tone when giving a programmed, canned response rather than conversing naturally. Both characters understand the hologram's true nature and know the real Walter is dead; faux Walter is aware it's playing a role. (It's not, however, self-aware, which is good, because as science fiction tells us, that way enslavement of humanity lies.)
Lorrie Lord portrays Marjorie's grown daughter Tess, who's skeptical about what Walter does and what it stands for, voicing objections that we might have: Is this helping Marjorie? Is it a positive development for the world? Tess is fretful about her own life, the realities of aging, all the big "whys," and Lord makes Tess true to life, as well. The wonderful Kevin Babbitt plays Tess' husband Jon, who argues in favor of Walter. Lively, affectionate, and resilient, Jon is an appealing force of positivity, and Babbitt's speech feels spontaneous, as if he's improvising a real conversation, not just saying lines. Both actors, playing a couple clearly in love even after decades, impressed me with their natural movements, reactions, and line deliveries. Their interactions are a huge contrast to Marjorie's and Walter's limited (though character-appropriate) physicality, underscoring the fact of the couple's real, full, mobile lives.
I could compare theatre to a large-language-model artificial intelligence: It's also an imitation of life that stirs emotions. The set, designed by Kingry (as is the production's lighting and sound), is simple and stark, with the inherent theatre-in-the-round space limitations expanded in the four corners – a slice of kitchen, a bit of hallway, sets of blinds positioned in walls and rigged to show light shining through. (In that hallway are framed silhouettes of pressed flowers – another imitation of life.)
So … is Walter good for Marjorie? The family's dogs, Toni and Toni II, were the same breed, and long before the simulated Walter took a virtual step inside the house, they blurred together in memory until the humans couldn't recall which dog had done what. Jon told Walter this; Walter reminded Marjorie. If Walter only had her mind to draw from, it wouldn't know they'd had two dogs. Is this important for Marjorie to know in any case? Marjorie is beginning to forget her other child, but he's always in her companion's RAM. Tess could edit him out of the hologram's memory to spare her mother pain. Should she? Memory is subjective. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. We edit our own minds, consciously or not, and reinforce or distort others' remembrances. But we're made of our pasts. When they leave us, what else will be left?
Marjorie Prime made me ponder all this and more. I happen to adore the Terminator franchise, as well as other science-fiction entertainments that feature non-human, machine-driven, teachable characters. (Read Daniel Suarez's Influx; it's bursting with astonishing AIs.) People tend to shake heads and wring hands over chatbots, interactive voice recognition, and Siri and her ilk. Right now, though, these frequently seem preferable to people in general, at least when kind words are needed. Given how humans are turning on one another to a shocking extent, artificial personalities seem to be providing more moments of compassion, connection, and humanity than we are these days.
Marjorie Prime runs at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre (600 Robinson Drive, Geneseo IL) through August 24, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)944-2244 and visiting RHPlayers.com.
