‘Marjorie Prime’ review: 96-year-old June Squibb is a marvel in an early highlight of the Broadway season

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 actress is astonishing as a widow named Marjorie in the superb revival of Jordan Harrison’s haunting science-fiction drama that opened Monday night.

Much in the same way Squibb has only gotten finer with age, so too has Harrison’s complex 11-year-old play about artificial intelligence, its possibilities and the deeply intrusive role it could have — hell, it already does — in our own lives. 

Eighty-five-year-old Marjorie sits in a comfy arm chair and speaks to Walter (Christopher Lowell), a friendly robot, called a Prime, that perfectly resembles her late husband when he was in his 20s. 

The Prime says he exists to “provide comfort.” Hmm, OK.

He hears her happy stories, absorbs facts, learns her personality and develops his own. He’s a kind of ChatGrievePT. 

Lowell is very funny and a little “Twilight Zone” as the android when he glides into the room with a ballerina’s grace. His silky voice could definitely give you directions on the highway.

The flesh-and-code pair chat in the green living room of Lee Jellinek’s set, which is an ideal color for sci-fi — futuristic, relaxing and sinister.

Marjorie, who is Gen X, is smitten with the CPU. Everybody wants someone to talk to, right? And more importantly, they need someone who listens. 

But her daughter Tess, played by a raw and powerful Cynthia Nixon, distrusts the technology. She refers to Walter as “it” — not “he.” 

Tess’ husband, Jon (Danny Burstein), is the Switzerland of the group. He observes Walter jogging the memories of Marjorie, who suffers from dementia, and giving her spirit a boost. What could be the harm? 

Well, it’s a play. So there’s harm aplenty. Gradually it becomes clear that the Primes aren’t providing much comfort at all. 

Their hurt users look to them for closure, to fill a void and wrap up unfinished and difficult conversations. They want them to be the deceased. 

Yet the devices are obviously not the multilayered, messy people they’re modeled after. They’re a fake version of who someone thinks their loved one was. 

That is an extremely clever spin on a frequent theme of American drama: that we never really know our parents.

Especially impressive is how director Anne Kauffman has taken three of New York’s best-known actors with giant personalities — a Tevye, a Miranda and a do-it-with-a-switch Electra — and made them into one of Broadway’s best and most natural ensembles. 

Nixon plays Tess as an everydaughter and everymom whose palpable stress over her mother’s health and 20-something kids’ careers throws us off the scent of what’s really raging in her mind. 

And just when we think Burstein’s calm-and-collected Jon is only around to facilitate a parent-child tale, the empathetic actor reduces the whole house into a puddle. 

When they’re all onstage together, their fame fades into a hyper-realistic family.

A reductive question people often ask is: Why do this play now? 

The answers for “Marjorie Prime” are pretty easy. 

Harrison’s story is topical, that’s for sure. Frighteningly so. What elevates it above the ripped-from-the-headlines hackery of, say, so many political dramas co-written by Wikipedia is that it’s also profoundly human and lump-in-the-throat relatable without ever toppling over into boo-hoo sentimentality.

The play exposes its audience’s emotional weaknesses like few others do. I reckon that most ticket-buyers will silently ask themselves if they would buy a Prime if they had the chance. And they’d probably be uncomfortable with their honest answer.

And then there’s Squibb. She and Marjorie are a salt-and-margarita pairing. The actress has a dough-eyed Midwestern neighborliness to her that contrasts the dark and painful secrets Marjorie is hiding.  She’s whip-smart, lovable and ultimately heartbreaking.

How fortunate we are to be here during June’s prime.