Broadway's Hayes Theater opened its doors this week to Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted Marjorie Prime, starring Academy Award nominee June Squibb, two-time Tony Award winner Cynthia Nixon, Tony Award winner Danny Burstein, and recent 2ST alum Christopher Lowell.

Billed as a futuristic chilling introspection into the human psyche, critics have praised the new Broadway opening. Take a read below to see what the critics thought!

The Reviews

The New York Times

"Harrison has a dream collaborator in Kauffman, who is a master at creating emotion without hitting an audience over the head. Her approach looks as if it is detached, almost clinical, but that only means she does not overplay her hand when navigating emotional stakes. This was obvious in her last Broadway outing, the quietly devastating "Mary Jane" (2024), and so it is here, with all four actors marvelously economical an approach that does not necessarily win awards but that lingers in audience members' hearts and minds."

Theatrely

"Freshly 96, June Squibb is giving one of the sharpest and most emotionally precise performances currently onstage in the Broadway premiere of Marjorie Prime, Jordan Harrison's one-act about an elderly widow and the lifelike robot modeled after her late husband. Exquisitely directed by Anne Kauffman, and rounded out by Cynthia Nixon, Danny Burstein and Christopher Lowell, it's an intelligent prayer for raw humanity in the face of catastrophic tech complacency."

Theatermania

"Anne Kauffman, who helmed the 2015 off-Broadway production, directs with a steady hand and a keen sense of light and sound. Sharp blackouts barely give us time to catch our breath before we contemplate Walter's face illuminated in a spotlight like a digital saint (Ben Stanton's lighting is more manipulative than any AI algorithm). Daniel Kluger's original string music is an echo from Majorie's past (she was a violinist) that becomes increasingly adulterated with electronic distortion. These elegant design choices undergird emotionally raw performances."

Vulture

"I kept waiting to feel ... well, more. More rapt, more heartbroken, more rattled by the harrowing questions presented by the long, slow, terribly seductive suicide humanity seems bent on carrying out via technology. Harrison is a formidable craftsman and Marjorie Prime is built very well, but in a way it resembles one of its own artificial humans: It's an extremely palatable version of the thing. It has studied how to be a play, and it's a good one if only the feeling of study weren't quite so palpable in that goodness. If only it didn't place so much value on the neatness of its own construction."

The New York Post

"From the moment June Squibb takes the stage at the Hayes Theater in "Marjorie Prime," you feel lucky to be in her presence. The stage and screen legend is back home on Broadway, where she got her start in "Gypsy" opposite Ethel Merman in 1960, for the first time in eight years. In between being on the boards, she's been hard at work making films, giving wonderful lead performances in "Thelma" and "Eleanor the Great". At a spry 96 years old, Squibb is, at long last, in her title-character era."

The Wrap

"At its core, "Marjorie Prime" tells a simple kitchen-sink story of two adults trying to care for an aging relative. Harrison tries to up the ante by dipping into his gothic drawer of horrors to deliver not one but two suicides that push the human narrative into the contrived. In the end, the machines are more honest than the humans and, better yet, there's none of the angst."

The Guardian

"What can be said here is that this Marjorie Prime, directed with restraint by Anne Kauffman (who was also behind the off-Broadway production in 2015), is both helped and hindered by its sudden relevance. It presents an intriguing and poignant suggestion of what might exist just a few decades from now, but perhaps doesn't suggest enough. With its novelty gone, Marjorie Prime must rely more firmly on its internal mechanics, which can be creaky."