‘Tell me more about myself.’ It’s the future already, and AI is editing the past for us: Marjorie Prime at the Varscona, a review, Theater News

“I’ll be right here, Marjorie. Whenever you need me. I have all the time in the world,” says a man named Walter sympathetically to the 85-year old woman (Maureen Rooney) in the comfy chair.

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That’s the way Marjorie Prime, the latest from Trunk Theatre, starts. And it takes you a moment or two to process (a telling verb in itself) that Walter (the excellent Ben Kuchera) is Marjorie’s long-dead husband — the 30-year-old AI version of him, that is, that she’s selected from the possible Walters at Senior Serenity. Their corporate slogan? “Companionship is better than television.”

Marjorie’s memories are fading with age, which locates a witty woman on the irritation-panic slippery slope as Rooney’s performance captures. Increasingly she’s struggling to hold onto who she is. And the imperturbable Walter Prime, programmed with whatever “facts” has been uploaded to him, stands ready to reflect colour detail back at her. He converses fluently about Marjorie’s favourite dog, long gone. Or the movie they saw the night he proposed. Or Marjorie’s kids. Or nothing at all. “Tell me more about myself….”

One of the most disturbing things about this unnerving and fascinating play, bywith Pulitzer Prize nominated Jordan Harrison, is that as Marjorie, in losing her memories, arguably becomes less fully herself, the Prime is gaining human-ness. He tells Marjorie’s kindly, conciliatory son-in-law Jon (Troy O’Donnell) that’s his goal — “I like to know more” — as his programmed memory bank accumulates. He wants to get better … at being human.

What happens at the axis point of the two trajectories of Marjorie and her Prime, one descending one ascending, is something you’re bound to think about when you see Amy DeFelice’s production. Is Marjorie talking to herself, her more-complete self in effect, when she’s chatting to Walter Prime? Having subsumed (or co-opted) more and more of Marjorie’s memories to feed back to her, with possible revisions, will the Prime (there’s more than one in the play) in the end be more “human” than the human whose memories are disappearing?

How you’ll react to a play that’s eerily topical, and catches you off-balance in a series of scenes, depends, too, on your own feelings about aging and mortality. The fear of both is at the core of Tess, Marjorie’s acerbic, prickly, snappish daughter (Sue Huff, who knows how to bite off a retort). And the defeat of time and loss — Walter Prime is Walter’s afterlife, in a sense — is what Primes are for. O death, where is thy sting?

In any case, it’s pretty scary how easily, even pleasantly, the take-over of man by machine is accomplished. What must have seemed like an unsettling speculation in 2014 (when Marjorie Prime premiered in L.A. en route to New York) feels different, and maybe even more chilling, in 2026. After all, AI already lives among us, figuring out stuff for us, arranging our schedules, writing our essays, telling us the news of the day, reminding us to take our cholesterol pills, keeping us company, sensing our moods, storing memories about our ex’s alive or dead….

The sticking point is what to do about trauma and grief. There’s a human drama in Marjorie Prime, a family tragedy that seeps through the generations. Jon argues that a Prime should be uploaded with a full roster of memories that includes loss, emotional wounds, traumatic experiences. In thinking about a terrible 50-year-old loss in her mom’s life (and her own), Tess wonders why the past can’t stay past. What’s wrong with having “a little peace”?  Later in the play she’s the character who proposes that “living is a distraction from death.”

I found the opening scenes in this Trunk production a little washed out; the characters, except for Kuchera’s Walter, seem to talking sotto voce to themselves. And the married couple dynamic between Jon and Tess doesn’t quite take hold. Maybe this will grow to feel more lived-in during the course of the run at the Varscona.

In any case, there’s an interplay of the realistic and the abstract in the play. Karlie Christie’s striking set, which aptly references this dual optic, has a recognizable domestic centre — Marjorie’s armchair, the suggestion of a kitchen — surrounded by abstract columns of vertical slatted screens, hinting of expansion, and a route to something else. And Ami Farrow’s lighting, which has an ethereal blue glow between scenes, points to an existential dimension too, and captures the feeling that Marjorie Prime is a kind of ghost story (well, it is about the rise of the un-dead). So does Dave Clarke’s subtle score.

Our ghosts live among us, and technology ensures the past and the people we love aren’t gone; we can keep them with us. Here’s a knotty play you’ll have to think (and if you’re like me, worry) about. Aren’t you nervous?

REVIEW

Marjorie Prime

Theatre: Trunk Theatre

Written by: Jordan Harrison

Directed by: Amy DeFelice

Starring: Maureen Rooney, Ben Kuchera, Sue Huff, Troy O’Donnell

Where: Varscona Theatre

Running: through April 19

Tickets: varsconatheatre.com