‘Primary Trust’: Big ideas on a small canvas

By Rich Fahey

BOSTON – Sometimes big ideas are drawn on small canvases. That includes the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Primary Trust,” which opens the SpeakEasy Stage Company’s 35th season and runs through Oct. 11 in the Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts.

Lovely and poignant, “Primary Trust” is the first work under SpeakEasy’s new artistic director Dawn M. Simmons, one of the founders of the Front Porch Arts Collective, who directed this production.

Playwright Eboni Booth has shone a spotlight on the life of 38-year-old Kenneth (a superb David J. Castillo), an unassuming worker at a small bookstore in Cranberry, N.Y., about 40 miles outside the city of Rochester,  N.Y. He grew up in a single-parent home as one of a few Blacks in a mostly white town, and his mother – the light of his life – died when he was only 10. He was then shuffled off to an orphanage.

He spends his evenings at a small Tiki bar named Wally’s, where the Mai tais flow freely – too freely — during happy hours and you can get a small meal. He has been following the same ritual for 20 years, since he exited foster care and found a job. He shares his time there with his best — and only – friend named Bert (lovingly and skillfully played by Arthur Gomez), who is a hale fellow well met and apparently the only one who cares about Kenneth’s welfare. A mild spoiler alert which Booth reveals early on: Bert also happens to be imaginary, which does nothing to slow down the long “conversations” over Mai tais.

Kenneth’s quiet and orderly life is shattered when the tired, spent owner of the bookstore, Sam (Luis Negron), suddenly decides to shutter and sell the bookstore and move to Arizona, giving Kenneth two weeks’ notice and a severance of three months’ pay to tide him over. Change is hard, and it’s even harder for someone like Kenneth,

 Slowly, Booth peels back the layers of the onion to reveal the many levels of trauma from Kenneth’s childhood, when a beloved mother – his whole world – died suddenly. We learn that a social worker named Bert took interest in the young orphan’s welfare and vowed to be there to support him – until he wasn’t.   Kenneth’s relationship with the Bert conjured up in Kenneth’s mind will ebb and flow. Bert may appear when he’s not wanted, oreven disappear when Kenneth is suffering anxiety at sudden changes, as when he begins a new job as a a bank teller at Primary Trust, one of Cranberry’s two banks.

Booth uses dramatic devices such as a   front desk bell that marks the passage of time. The setting is “before smartphones” so we know people’s faces won’t be buried in them, making it more possible to notice that man in the corner.

Simmons has cast perfectly for her first SpeakEasy production. In addition to Castillo and Gomez, Negron offers pitch-perfect performances as not only the bookstore owner, but as Clay, the bank executive at Primary Trust who goes above and beyond to give Kenneth a chance and then provides vital, possibly life-saving support when an ill-timed outburst threatens to push Kenneth back into the darkness.

Janelle Grace also has plenty to offer as a succession of waitresses at Wally’s, customers who encounter Kenneth at Primary Trust but, most importantly, as Corinna, the woman who takes an interest in Kenneth, tips him about a job opening and, like Clay, makes all the difference.

“Primary Trust” reminds us there are lives of quiet desperation, human beings who in our busy, increasingly unconnected society may go unnoticed before suffering an untimely end. But then there are those who take an interest in their fellow human beings.

Interestingly enough, Castillo’s Kenneth tells us everything we need to know in the play’s opening moments as he addresses the audience. “This is the story of a friendship. Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time. And the smallest of chances.”

Kudos to Simmons, the cast and designers for so skillfully portraying such big ideas on a small, intimate canvas. “Primary Trust” is a wonderful way to connect with your fellow man as part of a theatrical community.

The SpeakEasy Stage Company production of “Primary Trust.” Written by Eboni Booth. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. Scenic design by Shelley Barish. Lighting design by Karen Perlow. Costume design by Chelsea Kerl. Sound design by Anna Drummond. At the Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts through Oct. 11. SpeakEasystage.com