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Broadway Play Review—Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime” with June Squibb and Cynthia Nixon
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 25 January 2026 03:14
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Marjorie Prime
Written by Jordan Harrison
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Performances through February 15, 2026
Hayes Theatre, 240 West 44th Street, New York, NY
2st.com
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| June Squibb in Marjorie Prime (photo: Joan Marcus) |
When Marjorie Prime premiered in 2014, A.I. was still in its speculative stage. But now, with A.I. quickly becoming an all-encompassing nightmare, the plot of Jordan Harrison’s play is now disturbingly prescient. It begins with Marjorie, an elderly widow, sitting in her modest living room talking with a friendly young man named Walter, who turns out to be Marjorie’s deceased—but AI-generated—husband, who is part of a new computer program comprising what are called Primes, developed to help grieving people remember loved ones as they once were, keeping their (and the survivors’) memory alive.
Marjorie’s daughter Tess, however, hasn’t completely bought into the new technology—it does have some bugs, like a Prime not having sufficient initial knowledge to have a substantive conversation—but hopes that her octogenarian mother’s failing memory is not rattled by a long-ago tragedy that happened to Marjorie and Walter’s beloved son (which has also affected Tess’ relationship with her mother). Tess’ supportive husband Jon, for his part, feels that there’s no harm in using a Prime and it might actually help if Marjorie hears about past events she may have forgotten, however painful. The intriguing first part of Marjorie Prime explores the ethics and morality of this new technology, which goes hand in hand with these characters’ feelings of guilt and grief.
But Harrison short-circuits interest in this tantalizingly dramatic dilemma by repeating the plot device, to ever diminishing returns. Two more Primes appear following a couple of deaths; obviously, overwhelming grief makes the decisions to use Primes plausible, but since one of the deaths is so contrived—and the flimsy explanation so unpersuasive—it severely cuts into the rest of the play’s ability to insightfully explore its urgently thorny subject.
It’s also hamstrung by the shoehorning in of pop-culture touchstones from Rosemary’s Baby and My Best Friend’s Wedding to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” (along with a mention of the Central Park installation The Gates), which is more cutesy than cutting. And the final scene shares thematic DNA with the ending of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, to Marjorie Prime’s detriment.
Still, there are moments that are both slyly humorous and touching, like this exchange between Marjorie and Tess, laying bare their volatile but mutually needy mother-daughter relationship:
MARJORIE Oh no.
TESS What is it? (Marjorie’s face crumples. She shakes her head.)
TESS Mom, what is it? Did you have an accident?
(Marjorie gives a small nod, eyes down, deeply ashamed.)
TESS Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.
MARJORIE I’m sorry.
TESS Don’t be sorry.
MARJORIE I’m so sorry.
TESS It’s okay—It’s Shower Day after all.
Although Michael Almereyda is far from my favorite director, his 2017 film adaptation of Marjorie Prime—starring Lois Smith, who originated the role of Marjorie in Los Angeles and Off-Broadway, along with Geena Davis, Tim Robbins and Jon Hamm—“opens up” the play in a few subtle ways, including the introduction of characters only mentioned in Harrison’s script, and ends up more memorably affecting.
Onstage, the cast—under Anne Kauffman’s sharp direction on Lee Jellinek’s simultaneously realistic and symbolic set—can’t be faulted. Christopher Lowell makes an unnervingly gentle Walter and Danny Burstein is a sympathetic Jon. As Tess, Cynthia Nixon gives a devastating portrayal of a woman trying to bury long-held grievances, while 96-year-old June Squibb plays Marjorie with an oft-humorous bemusement that’s great fun to watch. Self-inflicted flaws abound, but Marjorie Prime still provides some needed theatrical food for thought.
Juilliard Orchestra Perform Beethoven & Ravel
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 19 January 2026 14:35
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Paula Lobo, courtesy Juilliard
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Alice Tully Hall, on the night of Monday, November 10th, I had the privilege to attend a splendid concert featuring the precocious musicians of the Juilliard Orchestra, here under the distinguished direction of Fabien Gabel.
The event started impressively with an excellent account of Ludwig van Beethoven’s magisterial Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, from 1806, with the accomplished James Birch as soloist. There’s some eccentricity in the introduction to the initial, Allegro ma non troppo movement—it is unusually complex and ambitious—but the music quickly becomes dramatic—the primary melody is especially beautiful, even haunting. The ensuing Larghetto is solemn too, while the Rondo finale, marked Allegro, is lively, dance-like and charming.
The second half of the evening was even more memorable, if only for the sterling rendition of Maurice Ravel’s extraordinary set of orchestrations—from his marvelous piano suite—Le Tombeau de Couperin, from 1919. In useful notes on the program by violist Noémie Chemali, who received a master’s degree from Juilliard 2022, she comments thus:
As Ravel notes, this work is “directed less in fact to Couperin himself than to French music of the 18th century,” a broader invocation of the Baroque keyboard tradition that shaped French musical identity.
She adds:
The movements most directly connected to Couperin—the Forlane and Rigaudon— draw inspiration from the Concerts royeaux, while the Prélude traces back to Couperin's pedagogical treatise, L'Art de toucher le clavier. The original piano suite was completed in 1917 with four movements, including a Fugue and Toccata that Ravel ultimately excluded from the orchestrated version he completed in 1919.
The opening, exquisite Prélude is more sprightly than might be anticipated in a work written as a memorial to fallen soldiers—it ends very softly. Also surprising is the seemingly even more playful Forlane that follows, but it is, again, thoroughly bewitching, if quirky; it too finishes gently. The succeeding Menuet is more lush and yet more transparently elegiac in tone—it closes very quietly. The concluding Rigaudon is energetic and brisk in rhythm—it also has a surprisingly cheerful quality, although the middle section is more subdued and slightly mysterious, but with ludic moments; the movement ends abruptly.
The concert finished enjoyably with a satisfying reading of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s enchanting Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543, from 1788. The Adagio introduction to the beginning Allegro is majestic, like the movement as a whole, and its musical material recurs throughout its main body which is more dynamic and at times celebratory. It precedes an Andante con moto that too has a somewhat weighty ethos and before long becomes more impassioned, but it’s not without serene measures. The consequent Menuetto, marked Allegretto, although less somber, retains an elevated approach, but the delightful Trio section is more jovial in spirit, while the Allegro finale is exhilarating and exultant. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
January '26 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 14 January 2026 22:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Streaming Releases of the Week
Christy
(Black Bear Pictures)
David Michôd’s fast-paced, Oscar-bait biopic about boxer Christy Martin—one of the first female (and first out lesbian) boxers to hit it big—Sydney Sweeney burrows into her character, trying on an outsized Dukes of Hazzard accent and enough sweaty physicality in her major awards-season bid.
Of course, the movie went belly-up at the box office—most likely because the conservatives who defended her jeans/genes ad didn’t want to actually see a queer heroine—but it’s certainly watchable, proficiently tackling the high (and low) lights from the undoubtedly dramatic life of a woman who fought all comers, including her abusive, and murderous, manager and husband (Ben Foster, in another amusingly overdone portrayal).
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Writer-director James Vanderbilt’s efficient dramatization of the postwar trials of Nazi officials spotlights Hitler’s right-hand man Hermann Göring, played menacingly but with a glint of amused hubris in his eye by Russell Crowe. His conversations with American army psychologist Douglas Kelley—played decently by Rami Malek—are the centerpiece of a film that gets many details right but doesn’t do much more than a documentary on the subject would.
There’s also the long shadow of Stanley Kramer’s self-important but memorably acted Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) but, in these fraught times, a Cliff’s Notes version might speak to us more pointedly.
In-Theater Releases of the Week
My Neighbor Adolf
(Cohen Media)
When Mr. Polsky, a Holocaust survivor living in a rural area of Colombia, notices that his new and reclusive neighbor seems somewhat familiar, he starts collecting evidence that Mr. Herzog is actually Hitler himself in Leon Prudovsky’s goofy comedy-drama that has some laughs but never follows through on its premise.
David Hayman is an amusingly exasperated Polsky and Udo Kier a wonderfully expressive Herzog, but the actors are let down by Prudovsky and Dmitry Malinsky’s soggy script, filled with superficial rather than subtler moments.
(Neon)
This second adaptation of Donald Westlake’s sly novel The Ax—the first was a leaden Costra-Gavras film in 2005—Korean director Park Chan-wook’s version is less clunky but still too scattershot to truly work. When Man-su, a longtime employee of a paper factory, is laid off, he scrambles to find a new job while his stay-at-home wife, messed-up teenage son and young cello prodigy daughter all deal with what becomes a shockingly pared-down existence. Desperate, Man-su decides to get rid of any competitors for a job by killing each off.
What in Westlake’s book is a spot-on satire on the excesses of capitalism—especially of the era it was written, in the late ‘90s—becomes in Park’s hands amusing but numbingly repetitive. So many sequences are dragged out that, accompanied by chipper music (when it’s not somberly classical), Park’s directorial sledgehammer is never more apparent. Even the acting, especially by Lee Byung-hun as the put-upon protagonist, suffers by approaching hysteria quickly instead of by degrees.
Sirāt
(Neon)
In Olivier Laxe’s apocalyptic slowburn, a father and his young son join a group of ravers in the Moroccan desert to look for his missing daughter; soon, though, the group starts being picked off one by one in a vast, unforgiving landscape that has become a theater of war.
It begins promisingly but, as Laxe ratchets up the tension, his characters are interchangeable and mostly unsympathetic, which turns the film into a miserabilist stunt, viscerally effective but emotionally remote. And when the minefield explosions take over, it becomes a surprisingly lax and ultimately pointless exercise.
Respighi—Maria Egiziaca
(Naxos)
Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s 1931 theatrical triptych follows the prostitute Maria of Alexandria, whose sacrifice later earned her Catholic sainthood, in a dramatically tense account accompanied by some of Respighi’s loveliest music. This audio recording of Pier Luigi Pizzi’s 2024 Venice production centers on the fiery aliveness of soprano Francesca Dotto, whose Maria could have been merely symbolic but instead is a flawed, fully achieved protagonist.
Respighi’s score sounds luminous performed by the Venice State Opera orchestra and chorus under the baton of Manlio Benzi. The Blu-ray of this staging was released more than a year ago, and the visuals add immeasurably to the powerful story.
January '26 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 09 January 2026 01:23
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
The Housemaid
(Lionsgate)
This often risible but entertaining drama based on Freida McFadden’s lively page-turner of a novel, tries a sleight of hand by pitting an unhinged mother, Nina, against her new, desperate housemaid, Millie—as Nina’s angelic husband, Andrew and young daughter Cece look on.
Director Paul Feig could never be accused of subtlety, so when it’s obvious early on who the villain is, the rest of this overlong flick becomes a slog, especially when everything is spelled out with clunky flashbacks. Still, the twisty revelations and consequences meted out are fun to watch, as are Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney’s paired performances as Nina and Millie.
(Meridian Hill Pictures)
When Liat Beinin Atzili and husband Aziz are taken hostage during the horrific October 7 Hamas attacks, her parents Yehuda and Chaya Beinin, sister Tal and children are left wondering if they are still alive and dealing with an unwanted notoriety, publicly discussing the hostages and navigating a minefield of political machinations from every side.
Brandon Kramer’s powerful documentary—which has been unjustly criticized for not acknowledging the suffering of Palestinians as well as other Israelis attacked that day—explores the family’s anger, despair, hope, sadness and willingness to put their trust in politicians with whom they disagree (notably Netanyahu) in an almost unbearably intimate way.
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Black Phone 2
(Universal)
In this unnecessary sequel, director Scott Derrickson—who also helmed the much cruder original—cleverly made this entry a creepy slowburn that nevertheless overstays its welcome with the usual dumb behavior and cheap scares typifying its genre.
Still, the performances of Madeleine McGraw, Mason Thames and Miguel Mora as the teenage leads more than compensate, and even those not enamored of slasher flicks can find something worth their time. The UHD transfer looks superb; extras include deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Universal/Focus Features)
Director Yorgos Lanthimos returns for yet another hamfisted, unfunny satire-cum-allegory-cum-cautionary tale that takes a few interestingly offbeat ideas from Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save the Green Planet! and proceeds to make comic, dramatic and cinematic mincemeat of them.
When two inept kidnapers somehow capture a pharmaceutical company CEO believing she’s an alien about to supplant humanity, little happens that is any way original, amusing or insightful. Even changing the gender of the second kidnaper makes no narrative or symbolic sense; and if Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons continue to put themselves at Lanthimos’ behest with diminishing returns, poor Aidan Delbis as the expendable autistic idiot is hung out to dry. The film does look impressive in 4K; extra is a making-of documentary.
Streaming Release of the Week
Visions
(Dark Sky Films)
In this equally disturbing and enervating mystery, Diane Kruger gives a smoldering performance as Estelle, a jet pilot having an affair with another woman, Ana, who must figure out why she disappeared and whether her husband Guillaume (or Estelle herself) is involved. Yann Gozlan directs for maximum slickness, and considering the cast and locations, it all certainly looks good.
But the script is a mess, and the attempt to make this a sort of erotic Twilight Zone episode is only partly successful. Kruger, Marta Nieto (Ana) and Mathieu Kassovitz (Guillaume) do their best to keep this from going off the rails before the risible ending reveal.
Good Fortune
(Lionsgate)
Keanu Reeves is having a good time as Gabriel, an inept angel who is literally clipped of his wings when he screws up and ends up working in menial jobs while waiting for another chance to redeem himself in writer-director-star’s Aziz Ansari’s rather mild gig-economy satire set in a Los Angeles of haves and have nots.
Instead of concentrating on his own, drippy character Arj—hoping for a get-rich-quick break and winning the heart of Elena (the winning Keke Palmer)—Ansari should have junked it all (including the usual one-note Seth Rogen as Jeff, the rich tech bro who turns out to be a hero of sorts and the equally insufferable Sandra Oh as Martha, Gabriel’s angelic supervisor) and concentrated on Gabriel’s subplot, which is by far the best thing in the film. It all looks terrific on Blu-ray; extras are an audio commentary and featurettes.
CD Release of the Week
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—A Hero’s Life
(Beau Fleuvre Records)
The latest excellent release from conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) is an adventurous recording bringing together a seemingly unlikely pair: Richard Strauss’ virtuosic tone poem Ein Heldenleben—the English translation of which gives the disc its title—and the world-premiere recording of Behzad Ranjbaran’s Violin Concerto.
A Persian composer, Ranjbaran filters thousands of years of his culture through the virtuosity of the orchestra and writes exquisitely for the violin. Strauss also powerfully unleashes large orchestral forces throughout, including a lovely violin line as well. BPO concertmaster Nikki Chooi is a masterly soloist in each piece, and Falletta conducts first-rate performances.
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