Review: PRIMARY TRUST at Mark Taper Forum
Mai Tais and human connection power Eboni Booth's Pulitzer Prize winner at the Taper
Kenneth, the decidedly low-key protagonist of Eboni Booth’s play PRIMARY TRUST, often finds himself at a loss for words or for the end of a thought. “I feel…” he’ll say, “This is a story about…” and the sentence will be left unfinished. Sometimes he’ll even flee the room before the words come out. His ability to articulate key feelings will improve as this quietly marvelous play unfolds. Arguably, Kenneth doesn’t need to be a prolific narrator of his ordinary life, but we damn sure appreciate it when he finds the words.
Similarly, PRIMARY TRUST has the power to leave viewers – and certainly this critic – without words, and I mean this in a good way. During several moments of the play’s opening night at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, the only sounds to be heard in an otherwise silent house, were audience members sniffling back tears. Booth’s deeply sympathetic rendering of a good man navigating a life of crises is 95 minutes of sublimity. And in the role of Kenneth, actor Petey McGee delivers a performance that is as throat lump-inducing as it is uplifting.
Kenneth, we learn in his introductory remarks (when he completes them), is a 38-year-old man who works in a used bookstore in the fictional upstate New York city of Cranberry. Kenneth’s mom died when he was 10, leaving him orphaned, and he has basically spent his entire life in the same community with no substantive desire to be anywhere or anyone else. Every day after work, Kenneth joins his best (and only) friend Bert (played by Ugo Chukwu) for happy hour mai tais at the local tiki restaurant, Wally’s. For lots of mai tais. Bert gets Kenneth, supplying him with ideas, helping him work through problems and counting him down to calm when Kenneth gets agitated. Around Bert, Kenneth is often more lively and outgoing then he would be otherwise. Bert is also an imaginary person. Kenneth keeps his own company. He’s quiet, he drinks a lot, and he does it alone.
More about Cranberry, population 15,000: a small and quite unremarkable place, with a Main street, a church and an ice cream shop, just about all of which can fit on an entire stage. Marsha Ginsburg’s set lays out several of these facades in miniature, perhaps to drive home the point that a community can be as closed in as it is protective and embracing. No, Kenneth is probably not too big for this berg. Neither is Bert, nor even the cavalcade of Wally’s waiters (all played by Rebecca S’Manga Frank) bearing dinner specials and mai tais. The doll house rendering of Ginsburg’s set can occasionally come off as more distracting than evocative, but when Kenneth actually goes outdoors into the snow and the fading daylight created by lighting designer Masha Tsimring kicks in, it makes for a lovely tableau.
Wally’s may be a constant, but the rest of Kenneth’s life is not. Laid off when the bookstore he works at is sold and shuttered, he takes a job as a teller at Primary Trust, one of the two banks. Even with coaching by Bert, the interview of this withdrawn man for a public-facing employee who will have to upsell checking accounts is uncomfortable, but his manager Clay (James Urbaniak) hires him anyway. Kenneth thrives at his new job even if he eschews offers to join his new workmates for happy hour drinks. He prefers the comfort of Wally’s, of mai tais, and of Bert.
As these decidedly positive developments are unfolding, Kenneth strikes up something like a friendship (or maybe more) with Corrina (S’Manga Frank), a new and very kind Wally’s waitress. Somewhat like Bert, Corrina also seems to understand Kenneth, sensing that the man is dealing with some deeply-hidden pain and willing to listen to him. Corrina takes Kenneth to a different restaurant on a sorta kinda date, but Booth does not move this relationship into the territory one might expect. Weightier changes are in the offing, and Kenneth will crack open, bleed and maybe even emerge in a better place.
The current of hope, generosity and human compassion fueling PRIMARY TRUST is…what’s the word?…idealistic? A pipe dream? Inspirational? All of the above? Whatever, the play earned Booth the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for drama. A couple months back, in this same space, I lauded the L.A. premiere of the 2023 Pulitzer winner, Sanaz Toossi’s ENGLISH, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. That production and CTG’s PRIMARY TRUST share the same talented director: Knud Adams, whose finesse guiding a story about a group of Iranian women gearing up for a TOEFL test is equal to what he has done here with Kenneth’s everyman odyssey. PRIMARY TRUST contains spurts of humor in its depictions of the foibles of human behavior. Other than Corrina, the waiters and bank customers are a mostly shticky bunch with S’Manga Frank nailing every potential laugh and Urbaniak (in three roles) reaping several more.
This is by no means to suggest that PRIMARY TRUST is purely a good time. The play’s painful moments – of which there are several, particularly late – are supplied largely by Chukwu and McGee. The friendship between Bert and Kenneth, a relationship which has essentially sustained Kenneth for nearly three decades, may be imaginary, but – thanks to a twist - it’s also real. Chukwu‘s Bert May present as more outwardly personable, but this is no odd couple pairing. Chukwu renders a man who is decidedly his friend’s booster, but who also when it’s time to step back.
Finally, there is Petey McGee whose work is superb. As easy as it would be to lean into the eccentric elements of Kenneth’s behavior, the actor keeps him honest. Even before we understand entirely why Kenneth is the way he is, McGee has us on his side and hoping that better days lie ahead for him, for Cranberry, heck for anybody who has to live, love and work during some very taxing times.
Mai tais may not hurt, but a little human TLC is even better.
PRIMARY TRUST continues through June 28 at 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.
Photo of Petey McGee and Ugo Chukwu by Jeff Lorch
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