Here, Cynthia Nixon plays Marjorie’s anxious daughter, Tess, and Danny Burstein plays her sweet son-in-law, Jon. (Kauffman returns to direct.) The three of them live in a strangely impersonal house—the uncanny set design is by Lee Jellinek—overtly “futuristic” only in its kitchen cabinets, which open upward, like the gull wings on a DeLorean. As Walter, Christopher Lowell is a particularly smooth-faced simulacrum; he is polite and attentive to everything the others say, gathering anecdotes one day so that he can regurgitate them the next. Tess wants to keep certain parts of the past secret from him—that way, Marjorie won’t relearn them—but Jon counsels candor. (Meanwhile, Marjorie persuades Walter to insert a movie-theatre outing to “Casablanca” into a story, to class the memory up a little.)journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter