Marjorie Prime stars June Squibb, Cynthia Nixon, Danny Burstein, and Christopher Lowell.
What would you say to someone you lost, if you could see them again? What if they’re a better listener now than when they were alive? Audiences are figuring that out at Majorie Prime, which celebrated its opening night on Broadway earlier this week.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Jordan Harrison reinvents the family drama in his richly spare, wryly funny, and powerful Marjorie Prime. A heart-achingly beautiful rumination on aging and artificial intelligence, memory and mortality, love and legacy, Marjorie Prime examines the blurred line between a life lived and a life remembered.
"I'm just trying to speak in complete sentences," Harrison told BroadwayWorld. "I never dreamed that this play would make it to Broadway. It's this 90 minute thing I wrote 12 years ago and the fact that people are still thinking about it is amazing."
The Broadway production is directed by Anne Kauffman, and stars Danny Burstein, Christopher Lowell, Cynthia Nixon, and June Squibb in the title role of Marjorie Prime.
"When I first started, I realized I was in the midst of Broadway royalty," said Squibb. "The three of them were so fine and had such experiences... and I felt wonderful. And we did a lot of table reading, which I'm not used to anymore. That was fun!"
"It's just impossible not to talk about June, you know," added Nixon. "She's so extraordinary. She has such a long Broadway history, but much more so with musicals... It's just it's been just such a treat and a learning experience watching her build her character, watching her get her lines down and her blocking down, and then when she sort of had it all in place, turning on a switch and the character emerging."