Dorothy
Chansky
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“Primary Trust” by Eboni Booth at
Weston Theater Company Weston Theater Company
Coming of age stories typically feature a central character in their late teens or their twenties. In Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust,” the protagonist, Kenneth, is realizing who he is at age 38. Booth’s play won the Pulitzer for drama in 2024. The title is the name of the bank where Kenneth gets his first job (in twenty years) not arranged by Social Services. But the title also suggests the broader ideas of personal confidence, faith, and reliance—all of which Kenneth retools after 28 years of living with secrecy, dependency, fear, insecurity, and not a small quotient of fearful cluelessness.
Our hero, played with a delightful mixture of earnestness and playfulness by Michael Allyn Crawford, has spent his entire life forty miles from Rochester, NY, in the small town (Cranberry) to which his mother decamped from the Bronx shortly before he was born. Kenneth spent his childhood fearing he would lose his mother, which he does at age 10, when she succumbs to cancer. We learn early in the play that his imaginary friend, Bert, is “the realest thing I know.” Bert (charmingly played by Raphael Peacock) is supportive, easygoing, and always there for Kenneth. Until, after 28 years, he isn’t. Do Kenneth’s problems stem from more than growing up in an orphanage and losing the only job he has ever known (he worked for a chain-smoking independent bookseller, who finally shutters the business and moves away when he requires heart surgery, needs capital, and wants a warmer climate)? Maybe. When Kenneth musters the courage to apply for a position at the bank, the supervisor who interviews him says that Kenneth reminds him of a younger brother who suffered brain damage in an accident. Is Kenneth on the autism spectrum? Is this why he was so mom-dependent and isolated as a child? Maybe. The production, directed by Bobbin Ramsey, does not explore that possibility. Bert was an actual person in Kenneth’s life before becoming an imaginary friend. He was the social worker who found ten-year-old Kenneth hiding in a closet with his mother’s corpse when Child Protective Services responded to a report that the boy had been missing from school. For two weeks the actual Bert took Kenneth to lunch and looked out for him before Kenneth was placed in an orphanage. Bert promised to return, but that never happened IRL. Instead, Kenneth built his own personal Bert in the spit and image of the man whose age he, Kenneth, has reached in the play. Despite having a wife and two daughters, Bert (the imaginary one) is able to join Kenneth every single day for drinks at the local tiki bar after work. Yup, Kenneth is an alcoholic who drinks alone. (If this calls to mind the 1945 Pulitzer winner for drama, “Harvey,” about another alcoholic with an imaginary friend, giver yourself an A in American theatre history.) It is a waitress at the tiki bar, Corinna, who tells the newly unemployed Kenneth that she has overheard bank employees at the bar discussing personnel openings. With the invisible Bert in tow, Kenneth applies for and gets a gig as a bank teller. Although he has zero experience in banking, he is honestly able to say, regarding working with numbers, that he “kept the books” at his last job. Both of Kenneth’s bosses are played by the redoubtable David Bonanno, Weston’s most versatile and reliable yeoman actor. Bonanno never disappoints, and his agility, ability with accents, and capacity to make any character stand out are ongoing proof that there are no small roles. Amelia Windom, who is a delightful Corinna, is not quite the chameleon that Bonanno is, but she does well as about a dozen waiters and waitresses and about a half dozen bank customers. When Kenneth finds the courage to ask Corinna out for a drink, she is eager to get to know him better (all the staff at the tiki bar gossip about who the lone regular in the corner is, speculating that he might work for the KGB, among other exotic possibilities). She accepts the invitation but tells him that she is dating someone. Still, they bond over martinis. Now that Kenneth has an in-the-flesh friend, Bert slips away, despite having encouraged Kenneth to make friends. “I don’t want a real friend,” says our hero. “I want you.” Things change. It's hard to tell exactly when the play is set, and it’s a memory piece, since Kenneth twice tells us that in fifteen years, all the independent establishments like the tiki bar will give way to malls and condos. The fifteen years seem to have elapsed at the time of his talking to us. (Cue the fog machine stage left that adds “atmosphere” to the misty past in Omid Akbari’s attractive and flexible scenic design.) The events discussed and portrayed include the bank’s ATM, no cell phones, and Kennth’s clear recollection of his mother having worn a big hat with a red brim. (Remember that she died 28 years before the events depicted). So, maybe a present-day 2010, the story set in 1995, Kenneth born in 1957? Orphanages (the scripted term) ceased to be “a thing” in the U.S. by the 1960s. Autism did not become an official diagnosis until 1980, so, who knows? Redolent of Grover’s Corners or Lake Wobegon, Booth’s
Cranberry, NY, is there—at least in Kenneth’s telling—to
remind us that good lives are lived in smallish environs, where
people work hard, reminisce, take responsibility, and look out for
each other, if you let them. Corinna loves the roommate who drives
her crazy; Clay (the boss at the bank) knows that his best days
were when he played football in college; Sam (the bookstore owner)
does right by Kenneth with an unofficial “severance package”
of several months’ pay in cash. And Kenneth himself? Home
is where it all happened, where he stays, and where—Booth
wants us to think—we can all find value if we look with the
right eyes.
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