Marjorie Prime Gets it Right in the Future

Sacramento Bee Photo and Review

(:)(:)(:)(:) for Marjorie Prime playing at Capital Stage in Sacramento, CA through June 3, 2018.  Understand my Snout-based rating system--5 Snouts up is the best. 

At the play's outset, Tess complains that her husband Jon has gone too far by creating a hologram that looks and talks like her dead father to comfort her mother with Alzheimers.  "We're living science fiction," she says (or something to this effect).  "When did we start living science fiction?"

I love this because it strikes me that usually when fiction is set in the future, the advanced technology seems to be just accepted--it's part of the normal.  But is that really how we experience it now?  How much of every day do we spend grappling with new technology and its implications?  Will that really stop at some point?  

This play fuses the emotional and physical reality of 2018 mothers in their 80s with Alzheimers (ask me how I know) with a future possibility of a holographic companion who converses and helps refresh and retain the person's memory.

It's super easy to see a hologram or robot that you've programmed with your memories as a logical extension of today's Echo Dots, Google Home Mini, and Apple HomePods (why oh why aren't these products advertising on my blog right now, sigh?).  

And while the play by Jordan Harrison (a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist) writes the future and the progression of someone with this disease well, and the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter brilliantly, I am baffled by one thing:  based on my experience, the hologram needs to be a lot more proactive to engage Marjorie in real conversation--she holds up her end of the conversation far too much.

Janis Stevens is stunningly brilliant as the lead character, Marjorie.  Even though Janis is a talented and powerful actress, I sometimes find her expressive face and voice too much for the relatively small stage and house of Capital Stage or the kind of plays they choose.  In this case, always fantastic director Stephanie Gularte (returning from St.  Petersburg, FL to direct this joint production with American Stage there), reigns Janis in and helps her channel that power into the insanely subtle yet effective looks and movements of a women with this disease--uncanny!

The rest of the cast is powerful as well, as always Jamie Jones is marvelous as her daughter Tess.  I'd love to see more of Steven Sean Garland who plays Tess's husband Jon--wow, he's just charming, relaxed, funny, handsome, sincere, real.  Brock Vickers as Walter Prime, the hologram of Marjorie's dead husband (as he appeared when 30) is charming as well.