“Primary Trust,” receiving its Chicago premiere at the Goodman Theater, is a more modest play than I expected given that it won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama. But what playwright Eboni Booth lacks here in scope and complexity, she makes up for with the quality of the work’s warm-hearted sentiment. This is feel-good theater, the kind that bathes you generously in sincere appreciation for simple acts of friendship.
Namir Smallwood plays Kenneth, who narrates his own story. He’s a 38-year-old man who works in a used bookstore in Cranberry, New York, a fictional far suburb of Rochester. With a population of about 15,000 — “mostly white, but there are some Black people” — it’s big enough for anonymity. Kenneth has lived here all his life, but he doesn’t talk to many of his neighbors. His mother died from cancer when he was only 10, a traumatic event that has frozen Kenneth in time, a bit like the town itself.
Kenneth’s stable stasis involves working and drinking 2-for-1 Mai-Tais at a kitschy Tiki restaurant called Wally’s with his best and only friend Bert (Charles Andrew Gardner). “I do believe in friends,” he says, a phrase that takes on extra meaning when he informs us that Bert is imaginary.
“Not imaginary in the way that you’re thinking,” he explains to us in a set-up that exemplifies the work’s gentile humor. “More like: Exists only in my head.”
As we learn more, and come to care more, about Kenneth, we realize that Bert might be seen as Kenneth’s sanity personified. His pseudo-existence represents a negotiated settlement with life’s scariest qualities, and the positive encouragement Bert provides is essential to Kenneth coping abilities.
But those abilities are tested when the bookstore owner Sam (a sympathetic Fred Zimmerman) breaks the news that the store will close. The crisis is real: It’s the only job Kenneth has ever had, and his habits have been core to his emotional stability. He’s a high-functioning man-child, in the most innocent way. And since the play is set, explicitly, “before smart phones,” there’s no escaping braving the dangers of… people.
Smallwood does an amazing job of exposing Kenneth’s emotional vulnerabilities as well as his fundamental competence. We root for him to succeed at every moment, largely because we can see, literally, the depth of his insecurities. And it turns out that the underlying story is not about the complexities of getting a job. The real narrative involves what happens when a nearing-middle-aged man who has been closed off so long starts connecting with new people.
Ultimately, “Primary Trust” — which is also the name of the bank where Kenneth finds a new job — is a contemplation on change, loss, grief, loneliness, financial anxiety and, most of all, how all those scary notions can only be cured by human connections, which require a leap of faith — not in the religious sense — and, yes, primarily trust.
From the start, as Kenneth announces certain themes and takes us on a verbal tour of Cranberry, Booth seems to be referencing “Our Town”: “We have our own post office, a church, two banks, and a wine shop just opened across from the train station….” In a clever set design from Lex Liang, a three-dimensional depiction of the town forms the back wall, and building-like blocks form the playing environment, while costume designer Yvonne Miranda fills in essential context for individual scenes.
And the play, directed with a sturdy, tender, simplicity by Malkia Stampley and supported by lovable performances from a supporting cast (Zimmerman, Christiana Clark, Charles Andrew Gardner) playing multiple roles, clearly aspires to a similar universality as Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece. But it’s also more specific — very much about Kenneth — and less allegorical. And yet, the play exists in a world that is both realistic and not, even setting aside the imaginary friend. This is a world that contains sadness and death and certainly loneliness. But this Cranberry also possesses the quality of a fantasy where people are fundamentally good, where community happens if you reach for it.
The combination of a fragile but likable Kenneth and a town with the motto “Welcome Friend! You’re Right on Time” leads us toward the deepest of positive feels, that we’re all in this thing called life together.
“I’m not much of a religious person,” Kenneth tells us. “But I do believe in friends,” he repeats.
I left believing, too.