‘Primary Trust’ review: The play values friends, kindness and empathy

Kenneth (Petey McGee), the central character of Eboni Booth’s exquisite, heart-melting drama “Primary Trust,” isn’t your typical look-at-me-now, throw-caution-to-the-wind protagonist.

A 38-year-old unmarried man who has worked in a bookstore for the last 20 years, he is decidedly a creature of habit. During the day, he sorts books and takes care of the bookkeeping for his boss, Sam (James Urbaniak). When evening falls, he heads over to Wally’s, the local tiki restaurant, where he drinks way too many mai tais during two-for-one happy hour.

He has one friend, a man named Bert (Ugo Chukwu), who drinks with him regularly and offers gentle counsel when anxiety gets the better of him. There’s one thing about Bert that’s important to note: No one else can see him but Kenneth. He’s an imaginary friend, but as Kenneth is quick to point out, he’s “the realest” thing in his life.

Bert (played by Chukwu with striking amiable spontaneity), is also remarkably real to the audience. Indeed, he’s a flesh-and-blood character like any other in this playful drama, set in Cranberry, a forgotten frozen suburb of Rochester, N.Y. The play, which takes place in the period predating smartphones, offers a microcosm of American life, not unlike the Grover’s Corners of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” before our brains were all rewired.

“Primary Trust,” which is receiving its L.A. premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, is a tonic for ailing spirits. The production, directed by Knud Adams, who staged the 2023 Roundabout Theatre Company world premiere in New York as well as the 2024 West Coast premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, where I first encountered and fell in love with the play, invites theatergoers to take a break from their alienated lives and become part of a community, whose motto is “Welcome Friend, You’re Right On Time!”

When Kenneth first appears to deliver his opening monologue, he enters through the audience, as though one of us were walking onto the stage to confide our story. Booth wrote “Primary Trust” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the play speaks softly about the difficult subjects of marginalization, loneliness and difference.

Petey McGee, left, and Rebecca S’Manga Frank in “Primary Trust” at the Mark Taper Forum.

(Jeff Lorch)

Spending evenings alone at Wally’s getting drunk and talking to himself certainly doesn’t help Kenneth’s social standing. But he can’t help himself. He relies on Bert to get him through, just as he did when he was a 10-year-old boy and the real-life Bert, a social worker, came to his home to discover that he was alone with the body of his mother, who died of cancer, leaving no one else to care for him.

Kenneth, who was put in an orphanage, has remained an orphan ever since. Bert never returned after placing him in a home, but Kenneth found other ways of keeping this hopeful, stabilizing presence in his life. Human beings are remarkably resilient and can invent what they need even in conditions of terrible deprivation.

But prolonged deprivation makes it hard to dream of a better life. Kenneth doesn’t mind that he’s essentially friendless and disconnected. He is used to it and protects himself by burrowing deeper into his daily routine. But his security is shattered when Sam announces that he’s selling the bookstore to take care of his health and that Kenneth is going to have to find work elsewhere.

James Urbaniak, left, and Petey McGee in “Primary Trust” at the Mark Taper Forum.

(Knud Adams)

Still reeling from the news, Kenneth has trouble getting a hold of himself when he meets up with Bert at Wally’s. Bert counts with him, a self-soothing technique that usually works for Kenneth. But the prospect of a job interview seems so far beyond his capacities he wonders if he’ll end up living on the street.

Many things mark Kenneth as different, including a halting manner of speaking that sometimes seems like neurodiversity and other times like post-traumatic shock. Booth doesn’t diagnose Kenneth, who relies on alcohol to get him through the nights. She treats him compassionately, seeing him as a person with an unusually difficult background, and wants us to relate to him as though, given similar bad luck, we could easily be in his position.

Race is part of Kenneth’s story. He’s one of the few Black men in a predominantly white town. He doesn’t know why his mother left the Bronx to take a job at a bank in a frigid nowhere and raise him without support. Kenneth alludes to some racial incident that happened to him at a dairy farm, but that’s not the story he wants to tell here.

James Urbaniak, from left, Ugo Chukwu, Petey McGee and Luke Wygodny in “Primary Trust” at the Mark Taper Forum.

(Jeff Lorch)

An onstage musician (Luke Wygodny), sitting behind a keyboard with his back to the audience, dings a bell when there’s a moment that shifts something in Kenneth’s internal weather. It’s an audible version of the dramatic pause that is wielded to such versatile effect by Anton Chekhov, Harold Pinter and Annie Baker. The bell never means the same thing twice but simply suggests feelings too big to delve into at this time.

Wygodny has written original music to subtly accompany Booth’s fable, lending the emotional subtext at points a penumbra of cello. Adams conducts “Primary Trust” as if it were a score, treating the play as a composition rather than as a standard work of stage realism — the right choice for a piece that beautifully deploys repetition (“but that’s another story,” “pardon my French,” “sky is blue, what you gonna do?”) and zestfully embraces its storytelling freedom.

The set by Marsha Ginsberg presents a model of Cranberry, with its downtown buildings miniaturized in the style of an adult playhouse. The influence of “Our Town” is evident in the play’s existential overview. But there’s an educational sweetness reminiscent of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and the frolicsome theatricality occasionally evokes the cheeky charm of “Avenue Q.”

Petey McGee, from left, Ugo Chukwu and Rebecca S’Manga Frank in “Primary Trust” at the Mark Taper Forum.

(Knud Adams)

Two of the actors, both of whom were in the La Jolla Playhouse production, assume multiple roles. Ubraniak plays not only Sam but also Clay, the manager of Primary Trust, the bank that takes a chance on Kenneth, offering him a teller slot. Rebecca S’Manga Frank plays Corrina, an amiable new waitress at Wally’s who tips Kenneth off that there might be an opening at one of the banks, as well as a litany of other walk-on roles, including additional waitstaff at Wally’s and bank customers who test Kenneth’s composure.

“Primary Trust” isn’t a love story, though Kenneth and Corrina have a drink together at a local French restaurant, where Urbaniak as an ostentatiously Gallic bartender gingerly shuffles two martinis to their table as though fearful of spilling a single drop of precious fluid. It’s a tale about friendship, or how other people can make an enormous difference by simply taking a moment to notice the stranger everyone else overlooks.

McGee accentuates Kenneth’s somber shading to a degree that risks sentimentalizing the character. I appreciated the restraint exercised by Caleb Eberhardt, who trusted the audience to discern what it needed to discern about Kenneth when he played the role at La Jolla Playhouse.

But the vulnerability that McGee brings to Kenneth eventually won me over, and I found myself rooting once again for this underdog, whose story is a testament to the power of empathy to make this harrying world a kinder and more welcoming place.