"Primary Trust" at the Guthrie Theater

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).

"The Song of Summer" at Mixed Blood Theatre

After a pretty intense 2018-2019 season of plays that included Is God Is, the trilogy Prescient Harbingers, Roe, and Autonomy, Mixed Blood Theatre is beginning their 2019-2020 season with something a little lighter. Playwrights' Center Affiliated Writer Lauren Yee (whose work has been seen in #TCTheater most recently in the Guthrie's production of The Great Leap) brings us a sweet and fun play that's almost a rom-com. The Song of Summer is not without substance, dealing with relationships, pop culture, and celebrity, but the story at its heart is one we've seen many times before. But it's told in a unique framework with an appealing cast, so it's a story I'm happy to watch. It's OK for theater to be light and sweet and fun, even at Mixed Blood, especially when this well written, directed, and acted.