By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
It’s not often that you encounter a play that’s both heart-wrenching and a brain teaser. The Black Swamp Players’ “Marjorie Prime” is such a play.
In what seems like a cozy domestic scene with an elderly woman, the title character reminisces with handsome young man. They are recalling a time when they went to see the film “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
As they converse, he reminds her that Julia Robert’s’ character had a gay male best friend, and that Marjorie afterward wanted one. She asks: Did I ever have a gay best friend?
“I’m afraid I don’t have that information,” he replies.
Is this her husband, Walter, recalling this or a simulacrum, somehow programmed with his memories to keep his now elderly wife mentally stimulated – or pacified as her daughter believes.
What else does the robot with artificial intelligence not have information about? A lot as it turns out. That includes a trauma that has warped each member of the family.
The Players’ are staging Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime,” directed Heath Diehl, this weekend and next in the troupe’s theater at 115 E. Oak St., Bowing Green. Showtimes are Friday, Dec. 2, and Saturday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 4, at 2 p.m. continuing Dec. 9 and 10 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for general admission seating and are available online at https://tinyurl.com/BSPSeason or at the door.
That opening conversation speaks to the oddness of this relationship. Marjorie (Fran Martone) converses with a handsome young man who could be her grandchild.
The Prime tells her: “I’m here for you Marjorie whenever you need me. I have all the time in the world.”
The year is 2062 (given the state of technology the playwright could have set it in 2042). Marjorie was born in 1977. She lives alone aside from this Walter Prime (Jake Spencer), a version of her husband in the early years of their marriage before they had children.
He is meant to keep her entertained, and alert, and help her remember the past – even if it’s an enhanced past created from bits of the truth.
Martone’s Marjorie is spunky, with an acerbic wit, yet there’s a vein of regret running through her.
Her daughter Tess (Nancy Wright) takes a dim view of this AI version of her father. It is just a ploy by her caretakers to pacify her mother though given their relationship, she should appreciate a pacified version of Marjorie.
Tess’s husband Jon (Jonathan Chambers) takes a more sympathetic, even playful, view of the device.
This reflects their attitudes toward Marjorie. Tess has had a difficult relationship with her mother, one that’s playing out in her relationship with her own children, and her mother’s interactions with Walter Prime do not help.
Primes don’t have hearts, but they certainly work on the emotions of the humans they interact with, forcing issues to the surface, though not helping to resolve them.
Over the course of the 80-minute play we will meet several of these Prime devices – each in turn at an earlier point in their programming. The less they know, the more heart-wrenching the interactions are as the humans struggle to decide how much of their lives they want to share with a machine, albeit as congenial machine.
Spencer’s Walter Prime exudes an almost human warmth. Mechanical, yes, but with a sense that it is eager to learn.
Chambers is pitch perfect as the son in-law who has the advantage of distance from the family. He was once the unwelcomed outsider. Now there’s a real sense of affection. He provides the human touch in contrast to Walter Prime. Yet he’s not so distant as to avoid the family’s emotional shrapnel.
Neither is the audience. Like a Prime we slowly absorb the details of this family. Unlike Prime we feel the emotional weight and heartbreak of these characters.
