Kenneth (William Jackson Harper, right) learning the news from his boss, Sam (Jay O. Sanders), that he will soon be out of a job after 20 years, in Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust.
Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust is a tender and riveting play about trauma and the difficulties of human connection that is by turns funny and upsetting, and ultimately uplifting. Its power lies in Booth’s ability to avoid cynicism and create characters capable of genuine surprise, without veering into melodrama or oversentimentality. Director Knud Adams, who also directed Booth’s Paris at the Atlantic Theater in 2020, achieves a smart balance between naturalism and the unreality of a memory play, with a superb cast, led by William Jackson Harper in a performance of uncanny vulnerability.
With the house lights still up, Harper takes the stage and introduces himself as Kenneth, a 38-year-old who lives in Cranberry, N.Y., a fictional suburb of Rochester. His speech is halting, as if he’s unsure what story he wants to tell or can’t quite trust the audience:
Kenneth tries to forge a real-life friendship with Corrina (April Matthis). Photographs by Joan Marcus.
This is what happened.
A moment. He thinks.
This is—
I’d like to tell you—
This is the story of how if you had asked me six months ago if I was lonely, I would have said—
A moment. He thinks.
This is the story of a friendship. Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time.
And the smallest of chances.
Kenneth’s story, a trip back to Cranberry in a time “before smart phones,” is told through direct address interspersed with dramatic scenes. This Cranberry is a vanished world—Wally’s, the tiki restaurant “with carpeting” where Kenneth goes to drink mai tais at happy hour almost every evening, is now the site of condominiums, for example. To evoke the nature of a memory landscape, Marsha Ginsberg’s set design presents the town in miniature. Music by Luke Wygodny, on keyboard and cello, accompanies much of the journey through Kenneth’s mind.
Kenneth is joined at Wally’s for his nightly mai tai by his best friend Bert (Eric Berryman). A twist comes early in the play: Bert isn’t real. Kenneth is not delusional—he’s aware that Bert is imaginary. Bert’s painful origin story, which is tied up with trauma from Kenneth’s mother’s death when he was a child, is eventually revealed. But for much of the play Bert serves as a counselor to Kenneth, advising him on how to navigate interactions with other people. Kenneth’s awkwardness is sometimes played for humor but can also be hard to watch because the audience is rooting for him so badly.
“Kenneth’s story is told through direct address interspersed with dramatic scenes. ”
Kenneth has worked for 20 years at a used-book store that is closing because the owner, Sam (Jay O. Sanders), a gruff chain-smoker in need of heart surgery, is selling to developers and moving to Arizona. Corrina, one of the myriad of servers from Wally’s whom the audience meets, all portrayed, sometimes in lightning-round succession, by the indefatigable April Matthis, suggests that Kenneth look for a job as a bank teller, which he does, interviewing with Clay (also Sanders), the manager of Primary Trust. Sam was accepting of Kenneth’s eccentricities, and it seems as though Clay might be as well, though that is tested at several moments.
The dramatic stakes of the play are whether Kenneth can form a friendship with Corrina; whether he can maintain a job with a boss who doesn’t know about Bert; and whether he can live a life out of the shadow of his mother’s death and Bert’s counsel. This might not sound monumental, but Booth’s characters are so human, and the performances so deeply embodied, that the stakes feel enormous. When something good happens to Kenneth at work, the audience erupted into cheers and applause.
Kenneth at happy hour at Wally’s tiki restaurant with his imaginary friend Bert (Eric Berryman).
Matthis is able to shuffle in and out of many different characters and yet make Corrina distinct and convincing. Sanders, wonderful as always, doesn’t condescend in his portrayal of Clay (and neither does Booth’s writing), so some of the character’s more stereotypical tendencies, like his nostalgia for his college football days or his emphasis on salesmanship, don’t define or limit him. It’s a great feeling to be surprised by how a character reacts to a difficult situation but also to find it believable. (Sanders also has a hilarious appearance as a French waiter.) Berryman’s Bert is pitched perfectly as imaginary, just a little bit off from naturalism.
Harper portrays Kenneth with tenderness and pathos but without excessive self-pity, and he becomes an unlikely hero. The play’s moving parts and staccato scenes are made seamless by Adams’s astute direction. Primary Trust manages to be understated and yet gripping theater, suffused with suffering and joy.
Roundabout Theatre’s production of Primary Trust runs through July 2 at the Laura Pels Theatre (111 W. 46th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Wednesday and Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are available by visiting roundabouttheatre.org.
Playwright: Eboni Booth
Direction: Knud Adams
Sets: Marsha Ginsberg
Costumes: Qween Jean
Lighting: Isabella Byrd
