Primary Trust
By Eboni Booth
Produced by Stage West Theatre
Directed by Sasha Maya Ada
Audience rating: PG-13
Running Time: 85 minutes (no intermission)
Accessible Seating: Yes
Hearing Devices: Available
Sensory Friendly Showing: Not available
ASL Showing: Available
Sound Level: Comfortable
Noises or Visuals to Prepare for: None of note
Reviewed by Stacey Calvert
Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Primary Trust is deceptively simple and straightforward at 85 minutes with no intermission, featuring only four actors, a cleverly transforming table, and two chairs in Stage West’s theatre in the round black box. The play is set in the fictional small town of Cranberry Lake near Rochester, New York. The town has fallen on hard times, and its confines and limitations are represented by set designer Allen Dean’s colorful, gameboard-like painted floor depicting the boxed-in but still beautiful world the characters live in. This play is not about action or plot; it’s about loneliness, emotional introspection, and transformation as well as the pain that often accompanies those human experiences. Booth’s work is a meditation on (pre-smart phone) modern life, as seen through the eyes of Kenneth (Lee George), a 38-year-old Black man in a mostly white town.
Kenneth leads a bounded and well-ordered life, working at a used bookstore for a gruff but kind boss. In a monologue style punctuated by commentary of other characters, Kenneth tells us about the town, his job, and his best friend Bert (Jamal Sterling), whom he meets every weeknight for happy hour, 2-for-1 mai tais at Wally’s, a local tiki bar. We learn early on that the jolly, warmly supportive Bert is a figment of Kenneth's imagination, which is when we start to understand Kenneth’s hidden baggage.
Kenneth thrives on his simple routine and seems to find comfort in it. But he soon learns that change is coming whether he likes it or not: his boss is selling the bookstore and Kenneth will be out of the job where he’s worked his entire adult life. This would be tough for anyone but especially the emotionally arrested Kenneth, who suffered trauma and abandonment in his youth and has coped by building a structured existence where everything remains the same. As the unwelcome change overtakes him and forces him out of his comfortably small life, we start to see cracks in Kenneth’s composure, and long buried anger begins to leak out.
The small cast is uniformly excellent. George plays the unassuming Kenneth with sweetness and depth and lets us see his inner turmoil when things start changing. Sterling as the supportive, wise Bert makes you wish he were your best friend, too. Tiana Kaye Blair and Brian Mathis round out the talented cast, each playing multiple characters weaving in and out of Kenneth’s life. Both are utterly convincing in every role, and Blair in particular is a genius at transforming herself with nothing more than quick changes of posture and vocal style as we watch.
Director Sasha Maya Ada keeps the pace brisk and does not allow the play’s inherent sentimentality to weigh it down. Darker themes are playfully punctuated by light, funny moments.
Lighting by Bryan Stevenson enhances the bright colors of the painted floor and highlights moments of emotional reflection. The sound design by Claudia Jenkins Martinez is excellent both in the clarity of the spoken word as well as the bell-like “plinks” of sound we hear throughout the play to mark shifts in time, place, and mood. Hope Cox and Lynn Lovett provide realistic and tone-appropriate costumes and props, respectively.
Stage West’s production of Primary Trust is achingly tender, quiet, funny and sad by turns. It will keep you thinking about it long after you’ve left the theater.
On with the show!
Stacey Simpson Calvert
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