According to American Theatre magazine, the two most produced plays in America this season are
Come From Away, which the Guthrie is producing next summer, and the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Primary Trust, currently playing in the proscenium theater. I'm so glad that these two pieces will have the most productions this season, because both are such beautiful stories of connection, kindness, generosity, and community. It seems obvious from the fact that they're so popular that we are craving these kinds of stories right now, when the real world feels so harsh, ugly, fearful, and divisive. Stories of people coming together to help each other, either on the grand scale of thousands of strangers unexpectedly landing in a small town on 9/11, in need of food and shelter, or on the smaller scale of one lost and scared person searching for home. I didn't really know much about
Primary Trust, by NYC-based playwright Eboni Booth, before I saw it, but I absolutely fell in love with it. It's so sweet, so tender, so achingly raw, so hopeful about humanity in a time when we need that. And it's also funny and brilliantly written. There's really nothing better than a piece of art that makes me laugh, cry, and think deep thoughts, and this play does it expertly and effortlessly. I'm sure the other 20 productions of this play around the country this season are good, but I really can't imagine they have a better cast, better direction, or better design than the one at our own Guthrie Theater (
continuing through November 16).
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what's better than Mai Tais with your best friend?
(William Sturdivant and Bryce Michael Wood, photo by Dan Norman) |
The play takes place in a suburb of Rochester, NY known as Cranberry. It's set in the last century, 1995, but that's really neither here nor there. Our story begins when Kenneth walks on stage and tells us his story - his mom moved here from the Bronx when he was a baby, and died when he was ten, leaving him to be raised in an orphanage and various foster homes. For the last twenty years he's worked at a used book store charmingly named Yellowed Pages, and when its owner Sam sells the shop to move to Arizona, Ken's life changes forever. Ken spends every evening drinking Mai Tais with his best friend Bert in Wally's Tiki Bar, but for reasons that soon become clear, Bert cannot go with him on this new journey. From his interactions with others, we soon also learn that Ken is perhaps on the autism spectrum, or has some other unnamed and possibly undiagnosed difference. Social interactions are difficult for him, and Bert has always helped him with that. Without him, negotiating his new job at Primary Trust Bank and his new friendship with a waitress at Wally's are challenging, and he falls down sometimes. But with the help of his community, his new support system, he's able to progress and grow and make a happy life for himself.
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how many different ways can Nubia Monks say
"Welcome to Wally's!" (photo by Dan Norman) |
The play is a mix of Ken's monologues, in which he's eloquent and graceful, scenes with Bert, in which he's very friendly and fun, and scenes with other people, in which he's awkward and hesitant, rarely looking people in the eye. In the monologues and with Bert, we get to see the real Ken, which he has trouble sharing with others. There are several moments in the play of repeated phrases, of stops and starts, as Ken gets into his story. Director Marshall Jones III, making his Guthrie debut, navigates this beautifully, with help from sound and lighting design, and brings out the best in this excellent four-person cast, with a perfect tone of small town humor and absolute heart-cracking-open emotion.
NYC-based actor Bryce Michael Wood gives one of the best performances I've seen this year as Ken. Eyes darting around, lips quivering, real tears in his eyes, jumping back at any physical touch, it all feels so real and raw and true. This is juxtaposed with the monologues, when he looks us directly in the eye and tells Ken's story so effectively. The strong local supporting cast includes William Sturdivant as Bert, just the kind of supportive friend everyone needs, Pearce Bunting as both of Ken's bosses and a snooty French waiter (all very different, and eccentric, men), and Nubia Monks in too many roles to count, including a long string of waitresses at Wally's, all with a different accent, physicality, and wig, many bank customers, and Ken's kind new friend.
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Bert helps Ken with an interview (William Sturdivant,
Bryce Michael Wood, and Pearce Bunting, photo by Dan Norman) |
The versatile set is dominated by Wally's, curved walls on either side "almost hugging Kenneth," as scenic designer Sara Ryung Clement notes in the program. A bright red booth is on one side, with seemingly endless Mai Tais tucked underneath, posters adoring the opposite wall, which opens up to reveal the bookstore. Other locations, such as the bank or a restaurant, are represented with a sign dropped from the ceiling or a few set pieces rolled out. It's all very smooth and effective and deceptively simple. Lighting changes play out behind the set, like the sky. Costumes suit the characters well and help tell us who they are; I particularly admired the subtle changes in the Wally's waitress uniform to denote different people, and the pieces that Ken adds as he goes on his journey, because he's not really off stage long enough for a costume change. (Costume design by An-Lin Dauber, lighting design by Jason Lynch, sound design by Lindsay Jones.)
The best plays are about humanity, nothing more and nothing less. Primary Trust is that kind of play. My favorite line is something like, "even though we will lose everything in the end, it's the finding that matters." Wally's, Ken tells us, will be paved over and replaced with condos in 15 years. But for right now, it represents joy and happiness and friendship. That's what makes the best moments of life so precious, knowing that they will end. This, now, is all we have. No day but today.
