By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
THE BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY closed its 30th anniversary season with “Primary Trust,” the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner, on October 13. Stylistically, the play written by Eboni Booth has much in common with Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Like the Stage Manager character in “Our Town” Kenneth (Justin Weaks), the protagonist in “Primary Trust,” directs many of his lines out to the audience. The other characters too break the fourth wall convention.
“Primary Trust” is a poignant, short play (90 minutes) with humor. Its theme is loneliness/aloneness. (An excellent essay “Lonely? You’re Not Alone” by Literary and Artistic Coordinator Moira O’Sullivan is included in the playbill.) The time period is “before smart phones.”
Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore clerk, introduces himself to the audience describing his hometown, Cranberry, NY – population 15,000 located 40 miles outside of Rochester. His community is “mostly white, some Blacks and a Cambodian” enclave. Kenneth’s mother moved with her son from the Bronx. She died when Kenneth was 10. He spent the next 8 years in an orphanage and a series of foster homes until he aged out of the system.
Kenneth has worked at the same bookstore for 20 years. His boss Sam (C. David Johnson) gives him 25-cent raises every four months. Though Kenneth and Sam clearly get along, Kenneth always declines Sam’s invitation for him to spend Thanksgiving with him and his wife, Lulu.
Kenneth’s tension is palpable as he reveals his routine life. At the end of every workday and on the weekends too, Kenneth goes to Wally’s, a local bar, where he is a regular, “who sits in a corner” alone and drinks mai tais until closing with his imaginary best friend Bert (Kyle Haden). Kenneth conjured up Bert shortly after being orphaned. Sam knows about Bert and accepts his employee’s idiosyncrasy.
Bert is with Kenneth always. Bert helps Kenneth relieve his anxiety, which manifests as tightness in the chest, with a breathing exercise that is effective by the count of seven going backwards from 10. A specific cause of Kenneth’s anxiety is news that Sam is selling the bookstore and moving to Arizona due to a “bad ticker” where there is “sunshine all the time.”
Kenneth will have to find a new job and the prospect of change is very stressful. Bert methodically talks Kenneth through other retail jobs he might consider but to no avail. Kenneth admits to the audience, “I’ve never found anything else.” However Kenneth is encouraged when Corrina (Hilary Ward), a waitress at Wally’s, tells him the Primary Trust bank is opening a new branch nearby. Kenneth is familiar with Primary Trust. His mother worked at one of their branches.
After a somewhat awkward interview, Kenneth, silently coached by Bert, is hired by the bank manager (played by Johnson) who likens Kenneth to “my brain-damaged brother.” The manager emphasizes to Kenneth the importance of “cross sales” – selling customers additional products like credit and debit cards – and the importance of “high solutions.”
The interview ends with the manager lauding the Friday night co-worker tradition of “happy hour.” Kenneth simply replies, “I’ve never gone to happy hour with anyone.”
Kenneth is quite good at his job, efficient and affable. The manager notes that after two months on the job Kenneth ranks third in cross sales solutions. The manager challenges Kenneth to top Frankie, the highest solutions co-worker for the past four years.
Kenneth’s success baffles him. He tells the audience, “I should have been happy. Work was good. It was better than I could have imagined. But I felt quiet and lonely. Why did I want to howl like a wild animal?” Kenneth shares that his mother “made me happy.” And that if she were more than 10 minutes late coming home from work, he would become “inconsolable.”
Kenneth, also, shares Bert’s origin. One day when he returned home from school, Kenneth found his mother dead on the bathroom floor. He moved her into the pantry closet, where he locked himself in with his mother’s corpse. Six days later Kenneth was “rescued” by a social worker named Bert, who got him a knapsack to replace the trash bags he carried his belongings in. Bert, also, promised to visit Kenneth daily during the two weeks he would transition to an orphanage. “He never showed up.” So Kenneth created his “imaginary Bert.”
Kenneth returns to Wally’s and has done so everyday for three weeks in search of Bert. Kenneth becomes very upset when Bert begs off having mai tais with him. Kenneth thinks Bert’s rejection is due to his new life. Kenneth experiences a panic attack but aids himself through recovery though it takes him to the count of three backwards from 10.
An encounter with a disgruntled customer (Ward) rattles Kenneth into making an error on her deposit slip and as tensions escalate Kenneth speaks uncharacteristically rudely to her. The manager resolves the issue, shooing home the now satisfied customer and assuring Kenneth he is not in trouble. In fact Kenneth is Primary Trust’s #1 solutions salesman. “Get a suit! Get a date! We’re going to the Radisson!”
In his final moments with the audience Kenneth reports he has Thanksgiving with Sam and Lulu; he joins his co-workers for Happy Hour at Chili’s every Friday; he has returned to school to study Spanish for a planned trip to Spain. There is no more Bert. But Kenneth did see his mother in her “big red hat” at the Radisson award dinner, where he delivered an acceptance speech.
Kenneth closes the show with, “I like having friends.”
The cast of Weaks, Haden, Johnson and Ward are splendid. Special kudos to Johnson and Ward for carrying off the feat of playing multiple, distinctive characters with aplomb. The staging by director Jennifer Chang is inventive. The set and costume designs by Baron Pugh and Danielle Preston, respectively, are appropriately drab save for Wally’s neon lit sign and floral tops for the wait staff.
I look forward to Barrington Stage Company’s 31st season.
For more information https://barringtonstageco.org/
