Sarah on theater

An hour and a half of serious-business sci-fi reflection on the role of memory, and especially its fallibility, in the concept of a “self” and in being human at all. How much are you your body, as opposed to the sum of your experiences, as opposed to the impression that you register on other people? What does it mean for identity when your memories fade in old age? How about when you misremember something, or otherwise hallucinate a memory? Could a replica of you be meaningfully considered “you”? What if it was very convincing? What if it remembered your stories better than you? What if it captured other people’s subjective impressions of you? How do these things change when separated by time or the distance of second- or third-hand knowledge? Why, precisely, is a “Sarah Prime” not Sarah?

These are the big questions asked by the text of Marjorie Prime. It’s an especially great time to dig this one out and debut it on Broadway in the era of the sycophantic robot—it doesn’t feel like a geeky thought experiment anymore when so many folks are making conversation with the GPTs and Geminis of the world. This short run in the tiny, non-profit Hayes Theater plus the obvious topicality gives them the opportunity to play it with a heavy-hitting cast. Danny Burstein, Cynthia Nixon, and Christopher Lowell are all delivering adept performances, but the highlight, of course, is 96-year-old June Squibb, who is somehow of sound enough mind & body to play an 85-year-old with fading memory for eight shows a week on Broadway.

The production is satisfactory enough. Everything takes place on the one great-room set with its architecturally improbable entrances and exits that seem to recurse onto themselves, which is a nice thematic touch. A couple of scenes have some nice lighting from unexpected places that dot and cross the emotional i’s and t’s. All in all, a good thinker of a play, serviceably revived. Worth the time but you’ll have to be interested in the text.