Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Marjorie Prime Also see Susan's reviews of American Idiot, 110 in the Shade, and Moment
In Harrison's play, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize, Marjorie (the radiant Kathleen Butler) is in her 80s and slipping into dementia. Her daughter Tess (Julie-Ann Elliott) and son-in-law Jon (Michael Willis) are trying out a high-tech way to help Marjorie: Walter Prime (Michael Glenn), a hologram who resembles Marjorie's late husband as he looked 50 years earlier, programmed to remember pertinent information and repeat it back to her. The audience sees the process as Walter retells memories of the couple's past, Marjorie amends the story, then Walter picks up the new information and the story changes. The playwright is vague about exactly when this is taking place, although there is a comment calling an iPod "old-school" and Marjorie refers to pop music from her past that Tess and Jon don't recognize. Micha Kachman's scenic design is a no-frills modern living room complete with floor-to-ceiling windows revealing a wooded exterior; the scenes span the seasons while Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" plays. In its quiet way and 80-minute running time, Harrison's characters take on serious questions. Is it kinder to allow a person to forget a painful loss or does the forgetting remove something important from the person's life? (The musical Next to Normal covers similar ground.) How much can one person ever know about another? When a Prime doesn't act the way its model did, is that a good or bad thing? Loewith has ably guided four actors who understand how to convey both the everyday concerns and the unexpected turns that life can take. Butler, with her wide-open face and expressive eyes, reveals the unsettling contradictions of a woman feeling her awareness fading away. Glenn is charmingly bland, while Elliott shows the conflicts of a woman left with difficult memories no one shares and Willis is warm and empathetic.
Olney Theatre Center |