Primary Trust is the name of the bank where Kenneth, a quiet, unassuming man of 38, is a teller. It’s a new job for him, and only the second job he’s ever had. To say he’s out of his comfort zone is putting it mildly.
“Primary trust” could also refer, obliquely, to the traumatic incident that has shaped Kenneth’s entire life so far. After that childhood incident, he created and put all his trust into an invisible best friend, Bert. In fact, Bert is lonely Kenneth’s only friend. Kenneth doesn’t believe in God, but, he says, “I believe in friends.”
In TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s luminous production of Eboni Booth’s 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Primary Trust,” we witness the changing circumstances of Kenneth’s narrow life as he narrates it, and as it unfolds in a series of short, taut fragments.
Those fragments add up to a portrait of a life that perhaps could have been yours or mine; surely there’s a little bit of Kenneth in all of us.
A sense of foreboding is established right at the beginning, as the avuncular owner of the bookstore where Kenneth has worked for 20 years (the always excellent Dan Hiatt in several roles) announces the bookstore’s closure. Kenneth (William Thomas Hodgson, soft-spoken—until he’s not–and endearing in the role) is gob-smacked but gathers his courage to find a new job.
Kenneth explains how he and Bert (portrayed Kenny Scott, with a toothy grin, buoyant, and as sensitive as the ideal imaginary friend!) hang out at the local tiki bar Wally’s in their suburban New York town (Christopher Fitzer designed the colorful map backdrop) for Mai Tais every night. There they encounter a series of waitresses all played by Rolanda D. Bell, a comic delight swishing around in varied, eccentric hats created by costume designer Becky Bodurtha.
Once Kenneth begins work at the bank, he is forced out of his comfort zone and must face the real world. How he manages to do that—how he struggles, how he hurts, how he freaks out and rages, how his relationship with Bert and with one of Wally’s waitresses evolves is both funny and heartbreaking.
At 90 minutes, “Primary Trust” is lean. Playwright Booth added not a single unnecessary word. Similarly, Jeffrey Lo directs with such a delicate hand, and Hodgson creates his character with such touching restraint, that by the play’s end you might not want to let go of Kenneth, or Bert, or even Bell’s empathetic waitress Corrina. Or the bank manager, a character in his own right, carefully plumbed by Hiatt.
The very end of Booth’s short play may have been influenced by Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” How beautiful is that!
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s “Primary Trust” continues through March 29 at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $49-$99 at theatreworks.org.