It might star Anne Reid and Nancy Carroll on nice type however Marjorie Prime proves a little bit of a slog on the Menier Chocolate Factory
“I’m afraid I don’t have that information”
A delayed journey to Marjorie Prime as my unique efficiency was cancelled because of forged sickness – Nancy Carroll’s viral laryngitis reasonably than any risk to 87-year-old nationwide treasure Anne Reid. But regardless of some top-tier casting, I’m undecided that it wasn’t the universe making an attempt to assist me dodge a bullet as Jordan Harrison’s play in the end lacks the spark to make it fly.
Set in a near-future that feels ever-closer with each ChatGPT headline, it is a world the place folks in mourning are capable of supply AI variations of their family members, a ‘prime’ to behave as a companion and/or salve to the soul. 80-something Marjorie has been gifted a first-rate of her husband Walter, although at a a lot youthful age and as she offers with the ravages of dementia, Harrison probes into what these technological advances would possibly do to the way in which we work together with one another.
The moments the place that is the main target are excellent – a scene between Reid’s Marjorie and Carroll as her uptight daughter Tess is magisterial because the latter struggles to cope with the notion that tech can ‘communicate’ higher together with her mom than she will be able to. But his consideration typically finally ends up on the shortcomings of the tech, the restrictions of machine studying heavy-handedly centred on the expense of an excessive amount of else, notably any actual sense of grief given how a lot loss we’re coping with right here.
An bold three-act construction doesn’t assist Dominic Dromgoole’s manufacturing, given the brief operating time, nipping an excessive amount of character improvement within the bud over and once more. Tony Jayawardena and Richard Fleeshman full the forged nicely, the latter specifically because the eerie AI-generated Walter. But there’s too little coronary heart right here within the writing to match the nice appearing onstage – there’s an actual thrill in watching such expertise as Reid and Carroll up shut however this stays a take a look at nonetheless.