Ben
Brantley

December 14, 2015

Try to remember. It’s never as easy it sounds, recalling something — anything — especially as the brain ages, and the past covers more and more years. We edit, we distort, we censor; we select, we discard, we reshape, until memory becomes myth. Such notions come to mind — and burrow in deep — during “Marjorie Prime,” Jordan Harrison’s elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama, which opened on Monday night at Playwrights Horizons. Impeccably directed by Anne Kauffman, with acting to match by a cast of four that includes the wonderful Lois Smith, this production keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you’ve seen it. Staged last year at the Mark Taper Forum, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, “Marjorie Prime” operates by stealth. It initially has the look and feel of a featherweight work — of a cool, low-key domestic comedy of ideas, built on a single ingenious gimmick. But at some point, you realize that it’s been landing skillfully targeted punch after punch, right where it hurts.