Marjorie Prime Reviews
Chicago Tribune- Highly Recommended
"...Along with the formidable acting, it is the careful understatement of Senior's production that makes this show work so well - the set, from Brian Sidney Bembridge, is a thing of mystery and progressive discovery, yet without drawing focus away from the humans. As for Thebus, well, this is among my very favorites of all the work I've seen from this venerable actress over the years. You feel you get to know her here; she seems softer than before. One is drawn to her side."
Chicago Sun Times- Recommended
"...Memory is an essential element of life – crucial to thought, feeling, progress, identity. But it also comes into play with particular power and meaning after someone who has been loved dies. And it is this tension between life and death – with memory functioning as connective tissue – that animates Jordan Harrison’s subtly shattering play, “Marjorie Prime.”"
Chicago Reader- Highly Recommended
"...Jordan Harrison's 2014 play Marjorie Prime adds to this line of speculation, supplying a quietly funny, quietly terrifying dimension that comes through well in Kimberly Senior's current staging for Writers Theatre."
Time Out Chicago- Highly Recommended
"...Playwright Jordan Harrison's work often hinges on what you might call speculative conceits. Maple and Vine looks at a closed-off community that's an intentional throwback to an idealized 1950s; in The Grown-Up, a magical artifact sends its protagonist hurtling from childhood to old age. Marjorie Prime, which premiered last year in Los Angeles and was a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is no different."
ChicagoCritic- Recommended
"...this production, directed by Kimberly Senior in what will probably be Writers’ last show in the back of a bookstore, focuses narrowly on a single family, and explores their ambivalence toward each other as much as toward their new computers."
Around The Town Chicago- Highly Recommended
"...On Vernon’s stage of The Writers Theatre, we spend 80 minutes exploring this function on our lives. It is, of course, the modern world, one where artificial intelligence has become a major factor. The Prime is a true factor in dealing with artificial intelligence. A sort of “clone” of a person who is or was of great importance in your life, programmed to know everything that you desire to recall and to allow the things that are painful to slip away."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews- Highly Recommended
"...“Marjorie Prime” may be an enigmatic playgoing experience for viewers who don’t pick up on the playwright’s intent from the outset. But the play raises so many speculative and disturbing ideas that it’s worth the patron’s effort. I suspect this will rank as a major play of the decade and we are unlikely to see a better staging."