‘MARJORIE PRIME’: June Squbb. Photo: Joan Marcus.

MARJORIE PRIME
By Jordan Harrison
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Through February 15, 2026
Second Stage at the Hayes Theater
240 West 44th Street
https://2st.com/shows/marjorie-prime
 

By Scott Harrah

AI (artificial intelligence) is everywhere in our lives in the 21st century. Despite all its hype, many contend that AI cannot truly replicate humans—human emotion in particular. Or can it? This is one of many thought‑provoking questions playwright Jordan Harrison poses in the sublime Broadway revival of his 2014 science‑fiction drama, Marjorie Prime.

The play takes place in the not‑too‑distant future, about 37 years from now, in 2062. Marjorie (Oscar nominee June Squibb) is an 85‑year‑old widow experiencing memory issues. Lonely and still coping with the loss of her husband Walter, she is introduced by her family to a “Prime”—a high‑tech AI projection designed to mimic her late spouse. Primes are not robots, but advanced technological recreations that look, speak, and sound human. The play opens with Marjorie in conversation with Walter, revisiting fragments of their shared past.

Blast from the past

Marjorie pours her heart out to the Prime, recalling memories in bits and pieces. The Prime absorbs these recollections and helps her refine and reorganize her thoughts about life with Walter. But are these memories truly fixed? Can they be edited, altered, or even erased altogether?

At the center of this debate are Marjorie’s middle‑aged daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon) and son‑in‑law Jon (Danny Burstein), who approach the Prime from opposing emotional viewpoints. Tess worries about the psychological toll of her mother bonding with a technological stand‑in for a deceased spouse, while Jon sees the Prime as a compassionate solution to Marjorie’s loneliness. These conflicting perspectives generate a steady undercurrent of tension throughout the play’s brief 85‑minute running time.

Parable about humanity & technology?

On the surface, Marjorie Prime may resemble an ethical parable about humanity and technology. While that theme is certainly present, Harrison’s play is ultimately more concerned with aging, grief, and how families process loss. The differing perspectives of Marjorie, Tess, and Jon lend the story a sustained sense of dramatic tension, raising questions about memory, truth, and the ways humans adapt—emotionally and morally—to rapidly advancing technology.

June Squibb & Cynthia Nixon shine

June Squibb, at age 96, has received understandable media attention for being one of the oldest actors to perform on Broadway, but it is her commanding stage presence and remarkably fluid approach to Marjorie that make her performance so compelling. With apparent ease, Squibb pivots between wit and cantankerousness, irritation and moments of forgetfulness, allowing each emotional shift to feel organic and unforced. She not only brings Marjorie vividly to life but also strengthens the performances around her.

Cynthia Nixon delivers one of her strongest stage performances to date. She brings sharp emotional clarity to Tess, grounding the play’s futuristic premise in recognizable human anguish. Ms. Nixon captures Tess’s anger, vulnerability, and deep emotional fatigue, particularly in scenes shaped by grief and unresolved memory. Her tightly coiled anxiety stands in sharp contrast to Marjorie’s more easygoing temperament.

Danny Burstein & Christopher Lowell

Danny Burstein offers a warm, grounded performance as Jon, Tess’s husband, approaching the role with empathy and restraint. He allows Jon’s quiet frustration to surface naturally, giving the character a relatable humanity. Together with Squibb and Nixon, Burstein helps anchor the play’s emotional stakes.

Completing the ensemble, Christopher Lowell strikes a careful balance as Walter Prime. He suggests warmth and familiarity while maintaining a subtly unsettling emotional distance, reinforcing the character’s artificial nature without tipping into caricature.

Dynamic direction

Director Anne Kauffman skillfully guides the ensemble, allowing each performance to register clearly while maintaining tonal balance. She never lets the drama drift into sentimentality or melodrama, keeping the production emotionally resonant yet controlled.

Marjorie Prime is a provocative and deeply affecting play, and one of the year’s best. It speaks thoughtfully to the accelerating presence of AI in modern life and humanity’s uncertain ability to keep up with it. The play ultimately suggests that emerging technologies need not be inherently frightening; they may someday help shape how we choose to remember our lives—and one another.

Published December 15, 2025
Reviewed at press performance on December 11, 2025

‘MARJORIE PRIME’: June Squbb & Cynthia Nixon. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘MARJORIE PRIME’: Christopher Lowell & June Squibb. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘MARJORIE PRIME’: Danny Burstein & Cynthia Nixon. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘MARJORIE PRIME’: Christopher Lowell. Photo: Joan Marcus.

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‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Rachel Brosnahan & Oscar Issac. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW
By Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Through July 2, 2023
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West 48th Street,
212-239-6210, https://thesignonbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window recently transferred to Broadway after a successful run at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The play was the second work by Lorraine Hansberry after A Raisin in the Sun and never found an audience when it was originally produced in 1964. This is an old-fashioned three-act drama that’s far from perfect and certainly dated, but it’s worth seeing simply to witness amazing performances and experience the long-gone era of epic three-act stage dramas that petered out by the early 1970s. In addition, the show stars Rachel Brosnahan from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as well as film star Oscar Isaac.

While A Raisin in the Sun remains a timeless, simplistic saga of African Americans in the 1960, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is a complex story primarily focusing on a white family in Greenwich Village, with many subplots and characters, including a gay male neighbor, a corrupt politician, a Black artist and others.

Ms. Hansberry’s second play is the saga of Jewish bohemian Sidney Brustein (Oscar Isaac) and the disintegration of his marriage to Iris (Rachel Brosnahan), a young woman from Oklahoma who works as a waitress but yearns to be an actress. Sidney’s wife Iris (Brosnahan) is the ambitious, progressive sister who feels trapped in her marriage. She is nothing like her older sister Mavis (Miriam Silverman), described as “the Mother of Middle Class itself,” who married well, is always impeccably dressed but is racist and antisemitic and initially has much contempt for her brother-in-law, but warms up to him later in the show. The youngest sister Gloria (Gus Birney) is a beautiful young woman who claims to be an “international model.”

Sidney is a struggling artist/writer who has just bought the Village Crier, an alternative weekly newspaper he cannot afford.  Wife Iris is tired of slinging hash as a waitress and her marriage to Sidney hangs tenuously by a proverbial thread as she longs to break into acting. Their marital clashes are quite intense throughout the first act. Meanwhile, Sidney has reluctantly decided to have the newspaper endorse local politician Wally O’Hara (Andy Grotelueschen). In addition, Sidney and Iris are nervous about their friend Alton Scales (Julian De Niro), an African American young man who wants to marry Iris’s younger sister Gloria. Initially, Alton has no idea what Gloria’s real job is.

The first two acts before the intermission are full of tension and politics and are often riveting with lots of dialogue and multiple monologues tying everything together but the third final act unravels with melodramatic twists and scenes that are not fully explained, making the outcome ultimately unsatisfying. If Ms. Hansberry had taken the narrative on a more traditional path, it could easily have been the story of a man who married into a family with three troubled sisters, but hardly the type Chekhov wrote about.  The Parodus sisters all come from Oklahoma, of supposedly Greek and Cherokee extraction. However, with all the various characters and subplots happening simultaneously, the narrative is choppy, uneven and mired with confusion. It is indeed understandable why this show is rarely revived, but it remains a thought-provoking play and depicts the political turmoil of the 1960s quite well. Many will see the show because “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan is the leading lady, and she is consistently great throughout the show but in reality, the character of Iris is not a huge role.  Regardless, the whole cast works well together under the direction of Anne Kauffman. Oscar Isaac as Sidney and Miriam Silverman as Mavis are especially noteworthy and both give natural, outstanding performances.

Editor’s Note: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window received two 2023 Tony Award nominations, one for Best Revival of a Play and one for Miriam Silverman for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published May 3, 2023
Reviewed at April 30, 2023 press performance.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Rachel Brosnahan. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Miriam Silverman (Mavis), Tony Award nominee for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Julian De Niro & Miriam Silverman. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Oscar Isaac. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Oscar Isaac & Glenn Fitzgerald. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Gus Birney & Oscar Isaac. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Raphael Nash Thompson. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

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NEW YORK – Producers Seaview, Sue Wagner, John Johnson, with Jeremy O. Harris and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), are thrilled to announce that the sold-out and highly acclaimed BAM production of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, starring Oscar Isaac (making his Broadway debut) and Rachel Brosnahan, will transfer to Broadway this season. Directed by Anne Kauffman, this strictly limited engagement will begin performances on Tuesday, April 25 for 80 performances only. Opening night – the final opening of this Broadway season – is set for Thursday, April 27, at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

To purchase tickets, please visit Telecharge.com.

Rachel Brosnahan. Photo: Courtesy of OMDKC.

Welcome to 1960s Greenwich Village, where loudly proclaimed progressive dreams wage war with reality. This razor-sharp tragicomical satire of “astonishing force” (The Chicago Tribune) invites us into the apartment of Sidney and Iris Brustein and the diverse and passionate social circle that inhabits it. As a rapidly changing world brings uninvited cynicism to their door, the Brusteins fight to keep their marriage – with all its crackling wit, passion, and casual cruelty – from being the final sacrifice to Sidney’s ideals. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window debuted on Broadway in 1964, on the heels of Hansberry’s meteoric debut with A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and shortly before her death at the age of 34. This will be its first time on Broadway in more than 50 years. Its run at BAM welcomed new audiences and broke every house record at the Harvey Theater. This is the first BAM-produced production to transfer to Broadway since The Gospel at Colonus, 35 years ago.

The late playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Photo: Courtesy of OMDKC.

“This production, directed by Anne Kauffman and originally produced and nurtured by David Binder and BAM, is a celebration of the radical artistic vision of Lorraine Hansberry at the zenith of her art making.” — Joi Gresham, Literary Trustee, Estate of Lorraine Hansberry Joining Isaac (Sidney Brustein) and Brosnahan (Iris Brustein) is the complete cast from the BAM production, including Gus Birney (Gloria Parodus), Julian De Niro (Alton Scales), Glenn Fitzgerald (David Ragin), Andy Grotelueschen (Wally O’Hara), Miriam Silverman (Mavis Parodus Bryson), Raphael Nash Thompson (Max).

The understudy company features Joey Auzenne, Katya Campbell, Gregory Connors, and Brontë England Nelson. Download headshots HERE. The creative team includes dots (Scenic Design), Brenda Abbandandolo (Costume Design), John Torres (Lighting Design), Bray Poor (Sound Design), Leah Loukas (Wig Design), Arminda Thomas (Dramaturg), Kate Wilson (Voice Coach), Sonya Tayeh (Movement Director), Ralph Stan Lee (Stage Management). Casting is by Taylor Williams.

For more information, please visit www.thesignonbroadway.com

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‘MARVIN’S ROOM’: Janeane Garofolo & Lili Taylor. Photo: Joan Marcus

MARVIN’S ROOM
Written by Scott McPherson
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Through August 27, 2017
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
(212-719-1300),www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

Although an often touching play, this mostly reverent revival of Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room never fully envelops you. Part of the reason is that the American Airlines stage is so huge for such an intimate piece, you get the feeling that the characters have to walk the breadth of the stage to talk or connect to each other. This is a broken family that is not wealthy and their habitat would be almost claustrophobic, but here the house is so spacious. Instead of bringing the family together in crisis, it places them in separate voids.

Bessie (Lili Taylor) has been tending her stroke-ridden father for the last 20 years; he is the unseen Marvin groaning in his own room. Bessie also tends her chronically ill Aunt Ruth (Celia Weston) who forgets the simplest little tasks that Bessie assigns her when she has to go visit her doctor. It turns out that Bessie is not suffering from fatigue but from leukemia.

This brings in her long-estranged sister, Lee (Janeane Garofalo), a woman she hasn’t seen for years. Lee also brings her two sons, the older Hank (Jake DiFalco) who has been institutionalized because he set their house on fire; and the younger son, the bookworm, Charlie (Luca Padovan). Bessie has never met her nephews but the three of them come down to Florida for tests to see if they would be a match for a bone-marrow transplant.

The play works best when it deals with the intimate subjects like the path the two sisters took. Lee left the family because she didn’t want to be trapped, Bessie stayed to look after her father and aunt. While Lee went looking for love, Bessie feels she has received endless love from the satisfaction of being there for her father and aunt. Lee is strict with Hank, Bessie shows him love and understanding. Different paths and techniques bring different results.

The performances shine. Lili Taylor, as the sacrificing sister, and Janeane Garofalo, as the selfish one, complement each other beautifully. Celia Weston, as the hapless Ruth, is a joy as always. Jake DiFalco as the troubled Hank is splendid. His ambivalence and wanting to belong is the pulsating heart that eventually brings the sisters together. Equally good is Luca Padovan as Charlie, the younger brother who tries to make sense of it all.

One wonders if Marvin’s Room could have been much more immediate and immersive had it played at the more intimate Laura Pels Theatre. a sister of the Roundabout family, because the 1990 drama was originally an Off-Broadway production.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published July 9, 2017
Reviewed at July 8, 2017 press performance.

‘MARVIN’S ROOM’: Lili Taylor & Celia Weston. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘MARVIN’S ROOM’: (top) Jack DiFalco & (bottom) Janeane Garofolo & Lili Taylor. Photo: Joan Marcus

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