Marjorie Prime

Noosa Alive!, or as it used to known, Noosa Long Weekend, is the Sunshine Coast’s celebration of Arts and Culture and has been a highlight of the area for a phenomenal 17 years. It’s usually jam-packed with events and artists including premieres, and this year is no exception. In between the contemporary a-capella group The Idea of North, and Blake Bowden’s Lorenz Hart tribute Straight From the Hart, there was Jordan Harrison’s (Orange is the New Black) little gem of a play Marjorie Prime.

A Pulitzer Prize drama finalist in 2014, Harrison’s play first opened at the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, before an acclaimed Broadway engagement at Playwrights Horizon in 2015. It comes to Noosa Alive! direct from its recent Australian Premiere season at the Ensemble Theatre, Sydney.

A futuristic piece set in 2062, Marjorie (Maggie Dence), a woman in her eighties is suffering from dementia which is placing a severe toll on her highly-strung daughter Tess (Lucy Bell) and her patient son-in-law Jon (Richard Sydenham) who are Marjorie’s main carers. Jon decides to hire Senior Serenity, a company who provide holograph Primes designed to help in bringing comfort and company to the elderly with severe memory loss.

Marjorie’s Prime is Walter (Jake Speer), a mid-thirties holographic image of her late husband who looks and acts like he was when she first met him and they fell in love. The fact that Marjorie has chosen a younger version of her husband and Tess’ father, unsettles Tess, but Jon is adamant that the computerised companion is doing her good. Marjorie, a Vivaldi violin player in her youth, reminisces about the past with Walter and if she doesn’t like the remembrance she’s having she promptly fantasises and changes it. She prefers a scenario of a previous suitor as being a No. 2 seed tennis pro when in actual fact he was an amateur, or that Walter proposed to her after seeing a screening of Casablanca when it was really My Best Friend’s Wedding. Marjorie also becomes a Prime for Tess, only in Tess’ version of Marjorie she is an old woman just prior to her death; a fact that worries Tess that her most vivid memory of her mother is when she was old.

On an almost bare stage except for a couple of chairs, but with superb lighting, this flawless cast couldn’t be better, and with equally flawless direction by Michel Butel, Harrison’s concept of technology as a palliative tool is uncomfortably realistic.

Lucy Bell walks a tightrope as Tess, a compulsively loving daughter on one hand, but on the other snappily critical of the little things such as when her mother sings a snatch of Beyonce’s pop “Single Ladies.” Richard Sydenham’s Jon is a stalwart of calm as he negotiates the stormy seas between both women, whilst Jake Speer’s Walter is a charming and handsome swain.

But it is Maggie Dence’s show. Her Marjorie is wilfully obtuse and forgetful, coquettishly seductive and witty, and above all human. It’s an ineffable portrait of a woman on the cusp of senility.

Festival director Ian Mackellar is to be congratulated on bringing this piece of Off-Broadway to the Sunshine Coast. It was thought provoking, disturbing and potent drama.

Peter Pinne     

Images from the Ensemble Theatre season by Lisa Tomasetti